Empty string not getting written with RawConfigParser

Question

I'm copying sections and options and values from one .ini file to another in order to merge multiple .ini files into one, with RawConfigParser.

In one source .ini I have this and would like it to be copied:

[foo]
bar=""

However, the result I got is

[foo]
bar=

this fails my requirement because the closed external program I test won't work with this ini.

I've tried with '""', \"\", "\"\"" but without success. (edit: note that in the output '' won't do any good for me either, it needs to be "")

My code is:

import ConfigParser

inireader = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
inireader.read('source.ini')

iniwriter=ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
for section_name in inireader.sections():
    for name, value in inireader.items(section_name):
        print name,value
        if not iniwriter.has_section(section_name):
            iniwriter.add_section(section_name)
        iniwriter.set(section_name, name, value)
with open("output.ini", "wb") as f:
    iniwriter.write(f)

if value == "": iniwriter.set(section_name,name,'""') works, but is this a bug? Or am I doing something wrong? Is there a non-hackish way to do this?

edit: I'm using Python 2.7

Answer 1

From looking at the ConfigParser source code, it looks like there is a special case where the read() function will convert two double quotes as a value to an empty string.

Not exactly sure why that decision was made, but it is definitely intentional behavior and I think that you will need to go with your hacky if value == "": iniwriter.set(section_name,name,'""') to work around this.