# 5.19 `shlex` -- Simple lexical analysis

New in version 1.5.2.

The `shlex` class makes it easy to write lexical analyzers for simple syntaxes resembling that of the Unix shell. This will often be useful for writing minilanguages, (e.g. in run control files for Python applications) or for parsing quoted strings.

See Also:

Module `ConfigParser`:
  Parser for configuration files similar to the Windows .ini files.

Subsections

- 5.19.1 Module Contents
- 5.19.2 shlex Objects
- 5.19.3 Parsing Rules