<p>I need to store some simple properties in a file and access them from Ruby.</p>

<p>I absolutely love the .properties file format that is the standard for such things in Java (using the java.util.Properties class)... it is simple, easy to use and easy to read.</p>

<p>So, is there a Ruby class somewhere that will let me load up some key value pairs from a file like that without a lot of effort?</p>

<p>I don't want to use XML, so please don't suggest REXML (my purpose does not warrant the "angle bracket tax").</p>

<p>I have considered rolling my own solution... it would probably be about 5-10 lines of code tops, but I would still rather use an existing library (if it is essentially a hash built from a file)... as that would bring it down to 1 line....</p>

<hr>

<p>UPDATE: It's actually a straight Ruby app, not rails, but I think YAML will do nicely (it was in the back of my mind, but I had forgotten about it... have seen but never used as of yet), thanks everyone!</p>

Is this for a Rails application or a Ruby one?
Really with either you may be able to stick your properties in a yaml file and then
```
YAML::Load(File.open("file"))
```
it.
NOTE from Mike Stone:
It would actually be better to do:
```
```
File.open("file") { |yf| YAML::load(yf) }
```
```
or
```
```
YAML.load_file("file")
```
```
as the ruby docs suggest, otherwise the file won't be closed till garbage collection, but good suggestion regardless :-)