Question

I want to parse a config file sorta thing, like so:

[KEY:Value]          [SUBKEY:SubValue] 

Now I started with a StreamReader, converting lines into character arrays, when I figured there’s gotta be a better way. So I ask you, humble reader, to help me.

One restriction is that it has to work in a Linux/Mono environment (1.2.6 to be exact). I don’t have the latest 2.0 release (of Mono), so try to restrict language features to C# 2.0 or C# 1.0.

Answer 1

I considered it, but I’m not going to use XML. I am going to be writing this stuff by hand, and hand editing XML makes my brain hurt. :’)

Have you looked at YAML?

You get the benefits of XML without all the pain and suffering. It’s used extensively in the ruby community for things like config files, pre-prepared database data, etc

here’s an example

customer:   name: Orion   age: 26   addresses:     - type: Work       number: 12       street: Bob Street     - type: Home       number: 15       street: Secret Road 

There appears to be a C# library here, which I haven’t used personally, but yaml is pretty simple, so ‘how hard can it be?’ 🙂

I’d say it’s preferable to inventing your own ad-hoc format (and dealing with parser bugs)