I just did a quick survey of 20 .conf files in /etc on my debian system, and found:
1 file used "key value"
5 used "key=value"
Thanks for that survey!1 file used "key value"
5 used "key=value"
I find "key value" a little unnatural. There ought to be a more definite separator between key and value that suggests assignment. The space people may just be getting lazy using their language's split function.
key=some full sentence with spaces in it. # seems more clear
key some full sentence with spaces in it. # than this
Allright then, lets go with self-parsed mapConfig, syntax:
# comment
key=value
file extension .conf. What's the filename, is it ~/.bitcoin/settings.conf or ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf or what?
I think we better strip whitespace at the beginning and end of the key and the value.
# user who likes column formatted
k = value
key = value
longerkey = this sentence would be this # "this sentence would be this"
key = value # guess this is ok too
nextkey = value
right = justified
The normal syntax should be "key=value", but you can't blame people for the occasional "key = value".