Python could then evaluate the fetchmail --configdump output and have the configuration available as the value of the variable “fetchmail”. Never ever do it. P

Python could then evaluate the fetchmail --configdump output and have the configuration available as the value of the variable “fetchmail”. Never ever do it. Python has very good parsers now. Using "eval" is crazy. Python is not just a scripting language like JavaScript, it has a full power of C under the hood, thus it's evaluation must be restricted. Or someone will set your or your client's “fetchmail” environment variable to '__import__('os').remove(...'.