Book Image

Mastering Object-oriented Python

By : Steven F. Lott, Steven F. Lott
Book Image

Mastering Object-oriented Python

By: Steven F. Lott, Steven F. Lott

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (26 chapters)
Mastering Object-oriented Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Some Preliminaries
Index

Configuration file use cases


There are two configuration file use cases. Sometimes, we can stretch the definition a bit to add a third use case. The first two should be pretty clear:

  • A person needs to edit a configuration file

  • A piece of software will read a configuration file and make use of the options and arguments to tailor its behavior

Configuration files are rarely the primary input to an application program. The big exception is a simulation where the configuration might be the primary input. In most other cases, the configuration isn't primary. For example, a web server's configuration file might tailor the behavior of the server, but the web requests are one primary input, and a database or filesystem is the other primary input. In the case of a GUI application, the user's interactive events are one input, and files or database may be another input; a configuration file may fine-tune the application.

There's a blurry edge to this distinction between primary and configuration input....