loading configuration file in clojure as data structure

Question

Is there a reader function in clojure to parse clojure data structure? My use case is to read configuration properties files and one value for a property should be a list. I

Answer 1

java.util.Properties implements Map so this can be done very easily without manually parsing properties files:

(require 'clojure.java.io)
(defn load-props
  [file-name]
  (with-open [^java.io.Reader reader (clojure.java.io/reader file-name)] 
    (let [props (java.util.Properties.)]
      (.load props reader)
      (into {} (for [[k v] props] [(keyword k) (read-string v)])))))

(load-props "test.properties")
;=> {:property3 {:foo 100, :bar :test}, :property2 99.9, :property1 ["foo" "bar"]}

In particular, properties files are more complicated than you think (comments, escaping, etc, etc) and java.util.Properties is very good at loading them.