This class extends normal Java properties by adding the possibility to use the same key many times concatenating the value strings instead of overwriting them.
Please consider using the PropertiesConfiguration class in Commons-Configuration as soon as it is released. The Extended Properties syntax is explained here:
- Each property has the syntax
key = value - The key may use any character but the equal sign '='.
- value may be separated on different lines if a backslash is placed at the end of the line that continues below.
- If value is a list of strings, each token is separated by a comma ','.
- Commas in each token are escaped placing a backslash right before the comma.
- Backslashes are escaped by using two consecutive backslashes i.e. \\
- If a key is used more than once, the values are appended like if they were on the same line separated with commas.
- Blank lines and lines starting with character '#' are skipped.
- If a property is named "include" (or whatever is defined by setInclude() and getInclude() and the value of that property is the full path to a file on disk, that file will be included into the ConfigurationsRepository. You can also pull in files relative to the parent configuration file. So if you have something like the following: include = additional.properties Then "additional.properties" is expected to be in the same directory as the parent configuration file. Duplicate name values will be replaced, so be careful.
Here is an example of a valid extended properties file:
# lines starting with # are comments # This is the simplest property key = value # A long property may be separated on multiple lines longvalue = aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa \ aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa # This is a property with many tokens tokens_on_a_line = first token, second token # This sequence generates exactly the same result tokens_on_multiple_lines = first token tokens_on_multiple_lines = second token # commas may be escaped in tokens commas.escaped = Hi\, what'up?
NOTE: this class has not been written for performance nor low memory usage. In fact, it's way slower than it could be and generates too much memory garbage. But since performance is not an issue during intialization (and there is not much time to improve it), I wrote it this way. If you don't like it, go ahead and tune it up!
@author Stefano Mazzocchi
@author Jon S. Stevens
@author Dave Bryson
@author Jason van Zyl
@author Geir Magnusson Jr.
@author Leon Messerschmidt
@author Kent Johnson
@author Daniel Rall
@author Ilkka Priha
@author Janek Bogucki
@author Mohan Kishore
@author Matt Hall, John Watkinson, Stephen Colebourne
@version $Revision: 1.1 $ $Date: 2005/10/11 17:05:19 $
@since Commons Collections 1.0