Here's an example configuration file: .. topic:: example.cfg :class: write-file :: [A Section] dir=frob long: this value continues on the next line .. invisible-code-block: python # change to the temp directory import os original_dir = os.getcwd() os.chdir(tempdir.path) To parse this file using the :mod:`ConfigParser` module, you would do the following: .. code-block:: python from configparser import ConfigParser config = ConfigParser() config.read('example.cfg') The items in the section are now available as follows: >>> for name, value in sorted(config.items('A Section')): ... print('{0!r}:{1!r}'.format(name, value)) 'dir':'frob' 'long':'this value continues\non the next line' .. invisible-code-block: python # change out again import os os.chdir(original_dir)