Given the following format (.properties or .ini):
propertyName1=propertyValue1
propertyName2=propertyValue2
...
propertyNam
If you have an option of file formats I suggest using .ini and Python's ConfigParser as mentioned. If you need compatibility with Java .properties files I have written a library for it called jprops. We were using pyjavaproperties, but after encountering various limitations I ended up implementing my own. It has full support for the .properties format, including unicode support and better support for escape sequences. Jprops can also parse any file-like object while pyjavaproperties only works with real files on disk.