Handling config files

	def loadConfig(self):
		"""Load user configuration file"""
		self.config = {}
		self.parser = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
		if not os.path.isfile(self.configfile):
			self.parser.write(open(self.configfile, 'w'))
		self.parser.readfp(open(self.configfile, 'r'))

		variables = { \
			'mplayer':		['paths',	self.findProgram("mplayer")],
			'outputdir':		['paths',	os.path.expanduser("~")], \
			'dvd_device':		['paths',	os.path.join("/", "dev", "dvd")], \
			'deinterlacing':	['vencode',	0] \
			}

		for key in variables.keys():
			self.cautiousLoad(variables[key][0], key, variables[key][1])


	def cautiousLoad(self, section, var, default):
		"""Load a configurable variable within an exception clause,
		in case variable is not in configuration file"""
		try:
			self.config[var] = int(self.parser.get(section, var))
		except:
			self.config[var] = default
			try:
				self.parser.set(section, var, default)
			except:
				self.parser.add_section(section)
				self.parser.set(section, var, default)
			self.parser.write(open(self.configfile, 'w'))


	def findProgram(self, program):
		"""Looks for program in path, and returns full path if found"""
		for path in config.paths:
			if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(path, program)):
				return os.path.join(path, program)

[some key]
followed
by
some
string

[another key]
Any string you like as long as it doesn't contain too '\n' char's together.

[yet another]
It's pretty basic and has room for improvments i.e error catching, but it does the job :) and it's very easy to use.

#!/urs/bin/env python

def load(file):

	configure = {}
	data = open(file, 'r').read().split('\n\n')	

	for part in data:
		part = part.split('\n', 1)
		configure[part[0][1:-1]] = part[1].strip()

	return configure
	

if __name__ == '__main__':

	config = load('config.txt')

	print str(config) + '\n\n'

	for each in config.keys():
		print config[each] + '\n'