Re: reading raw variables from file

"Bruno Desthuilliers" schrieb
I have a file that might contain literal python
variable statements at every line. For example
the file info.dat looks like this:
users = ["Bob", "Jane"]
status = {1:"ok",2:users[0]}
the problem is I want to read this file and load
whatever variables written in it as normal python
variable statements so that when i read the file,
my users var will be ["Bob","Jane"] and my status
var will be {1:"ok",2:users[0]} .
Is there an easy way of doing this instead of
parsing the files and checking said types?


You might want to look at the eval, exec and execfile;

Or just import...

but bear in in mind Paddy's warning about security.

+10


If I have understood python naming scoping correctly,
doing
my_var="hello"
import stuff
print my_var
is not the same as
my_var="hello"
exec open("stuff.py").read()
print my_var
with stuff.py containing
my_var="bye"

I use this exec open("stuff.py").read() mechanism to set
values in my scripts: the script sets a useful default,
a command-line argument in the form a valid python program
may override it. Why bother with inventing or using another
mechanism when this is perfectly simple, easy and self-explaining?

The one and only thing against it is that a malicious user
can sneak in an os.system("cd / && rm -rf *").

IMHO. YMMV.
Martin








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