Configuration Key Value Store

I'm in the planning stages of a script/app that I'm going to need to write soon. In short, I'm going to have a configuration file that stores multiple key value pairs for a system configuration. Various applications will talk to this file including python/shell/rc scripts.

One example case would be that when the system boots, it pulls the static IP to assign to itself from that file. This means it would be nice to quickly grab a key/value from this file in a shell/rc script (ifconfig `evalconffile main_interface` `evalconffile primary_ip` up), where evalconffile is the script that fetche开发者_JAVA技巧s the value when provided with a key.

I'm looking for suggestions on the best way to approach this. I've tossed around the idea of using a plain text file and perl to retrieve the value. I've also tossed around the idea of using YAML for the configuration file since there may end up being a use case where we need multiple values for a key and general expansion. I know YAML would make it accessible from python and perl, but I'm not sure what the best way to access it from a quickly access it from a shell/rc script would be.

Am I headed in the right direction?

One approach would be to simply do the YAML as you wanted, and then when a shell/RC wants a key/value pair, they would call a small Perl script (the evalconffile in your example) that would parse YAML on the shell script's behalf and print out the value(s)

SQLite will give you greatest flexibility, since you don't seem to know the scope of what will be stored in there. It appears there's support for it in all scripting languages you mentioned.