So my whole problem is that I have two files one with following format(for Python 2.6): #comments config = { #comments 'name': 'hello', 'see?': 'world':'ABC',CLASS=3 } This file has number of sections like this. Second file has format: [23] [config] 'name'='abc' 'see?'= [23] Now the requirement is that I need to compare both files and generate file as: #comments config = { #comments 'name': 'abc', 'see?': 'world':'ABC',CLASS=3 } So the result file will contain the values from the first file, unless the value for same attribute is there in second file, which will overwrite the value. Now my problem is how to manipulate these files using Python. Thanks in advance and for your previous answers in short time ,I need to use python 2.6