If a ParsingError occurs while reading a config file, the multi-line values collected while reading will never be joined because the error is raised before this can happen. This leads to very unexpected results, e.g. consider the following config.ini:[DEFAULT]test = testinvalid>>> cfg = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()>>> cfg.read(['config.ini'])This will raise a ParsingError as expected. But the option values that were parsed without error are now all lists instead of strings:>>> cfg.get('DEFAULT', test')['test']Patch attached.

[Btw, you might want to fix the contributor agreement form - I can't sign it because it shows no text, so I don't know what I'm supposed to enter in the fields (Firefox 37.0.2)]

[Thanks for the headsup about the contributor agreement form, now reported ashttps://github.com/python/pythondotorg/issues/747]

It seems this hasn't landed yet?

New changeset40567b8e3478 by Łukasz Langa in branch '3.5':Fixes#24142: [configparser] always join multiline values to not leave the parser in an invalid statehttps://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/40567b8e3478New changeset306cfb866399 by Łukasz Langa in branch '3.6':Merge 3.5, fix for#24142https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/306cfb866399New changeset876bee0bd0ba by Łukasz Langa in branch 'default':Merge 3.6, fix for#24142https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/876bee0bd0ba

Thanks for your patch! As you can see, 2.7 is no longer touched as the codebases diverged. I'll release a 3.6 backport on PyPI sometime this weekend that you can use.

Is this release critical for 3.6.0?

After discussing this offline with Łukasz, I'm going to take the risk of allowing the non-conforming 3.6 checkin to remain in for 3.6.0.

> Thanks for your patch! As you can see, 2.7 is no longer touched as thecodebases diverged.Thanks, although I have to say it's a little bit unfortunate that Python2.7 will be left in a worse state than 2.6 where this bug did not exist.

Would be nice to addMisc/NEWS entry for this patch.