For config files at least, I've moved entirely to ini format. Python's configparser is handy for machine generating complicated configs and the nesting/list su

For config files at least, I've moved entirely to ini format. Python's configparser is handy for machine generating complicated configs and the nesting/list support in JSON adds way more complexity than I need compared to just using comma separated lists as values. This is my entire ini parser for making a std::map<std::string, std::string>. I cast/parse the values at the use site: std::regex section_test("\\[(.*?)\\]"); std::regex value_test("([\\w\\.]+)\\s*=\\s*([^\\+]+(?!\\+{3}))"); while(-1 != getline((char**)&buf, &len, file)) { std::string line(buf); trim(line); if(!line.size() || line[0] == '#') continue; std::smatch match; if(std::regex_search(line, match, section_test)) current_section = match[1].str(); else if(std::regex_search(line, match, value_test)) { std::string key(match[1].str()); std::string value(match[2].str()); info("INIReader: %s::%s = %s\n", current_section.c_str(), key.c_str(), value.c_str()); config[current_section][key] = value; } }