Consistent return type for .validate()?

[ytrepus]

Hello,

It seems a little awkward for .validate to return a single boolean True when the configspec is validated, but a dict when there is an error (especially since the non-empty dict is evaluated as True which can be misleading). Almost feels like there should be a .validate that is always boolean, False if any one of the validations failed, and then a validate.detail or something that always has a dict with {field: validation result}, even if the validation is all True.

Also is it possible to replace values where validate failed with a default as specified in the configspec? I'm currently doing this manually by iterating over the .validate if validate is not True (which is what prompted the above).

If any of this is user error, my apologies; I am new to the library (but finding it very helpful so far!)

Thanks a lot,
Rob

[maxslimmer]

@ytrepus For your second part you might want to watch issue #136

[robdennis]

changing the return type of validate does feel like a non-backwards compatible thing, but it seems worth considering so move it to Someday

[sybik1]

IMHO, I prefer to get as much information as possible in case something but not all failed, i.e. a dictionary.

Also, you can check more explicitly for boolean True or False:
VAL := ConfigObj(...).validate() is True instead of simple if VAL: where non-empty dictionary indeed evaluates to True.