Paths

Paths through the configuration can be specified similarly to the POSIX path formalism.

• Nested segments of a path are separated by ‘/’ characters

• A path beginning with a ‘/’ character is an absolute path beginning from the root of the configuration

• A path not beginning with a ‘/’ character is a relative path beginning from the current location in the configuration

• The current location is represented by a ‘.’ character

• The location above this one is represented by ‘..’

• An empty string translates to ‘.’

These are represented by the Path class.

Many operations such as declaring, setting and accessing options and subconfigurations can be done with a path leading to a different block in the hierarchy. For example, cfg["SubCfg1"]["Option"] = "Value" is exactly equivalent to cfg["SubCfg1/Option"] = "Value" and cfg.parent["SubCfg2"] is equivalent to cfg["../SubCfg2"].

A function which acts directly on a single ConfigBlock can be converted into one which can follow paths through the hierarchy by using the recurse decorator. This takes a function whose first two parameters are a ConfigBlock and a str which refers to a key in that block and returns a new function which will first navigate to the correct block and then call the wrapped function.