Can I use asterisk * in config file variable name?

Question

I am using Config Parser to specify a list of variables, and the values for those variables are then pulled from a larger file. The variables/lines in the larger file all look like this:

callCount.1.cell=2
callCount.2.cell=10
callCount.3.cell=12

Rather than listing all these variables specifically, would I be able to use an '*' as a wildcard character, in place of the number, like this:

[variablesToPull]  
callCount.*.cell

I can't change the formatting of the larger file I'm pulling values from, and I don't always know what the numbers that are apart of the variables will be.

EDIT: I'm using Python 2.7 to do all my Config Parsing

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 06 '17 at 18:26

After looking around for a while I don't think it's possible. I ended up using just the first part of the desired variable name in the config file

[variablesToPull]
callCount

Then I created a dictionary from the file I was storing the full list of variable names and values in (All the following code is for Python 2.7, it probably works for Python 3, but might need some syntax changes)

f = open(variable_names_and_values_file, 'r')
dict_of_vars= {}
for line in f:
    k, v = line.strip().split('=')
    dict_of_vars[k.strip()] = v.strip()
f.close()

Then I looped over this dictionary and created a new list of the specific variables to pull (like callCount.1.cell, callCount.2.cell, ect...)

new_variables= []
for var in partial_variable_names_from_config_file:
    for data in dict_of_vars:
        if var in data:
            new_variables.append(data)

Initially I didn't want to do so much looping for fear of performance decrease (my file of variables has like 10000 lines), but it doesn't seem to have slowed down my script by a noticeable amount.

Hope this helps someone out there

Can I use asterisk * in config file variable name?

1 Answers1