Convert a set of INI file configurations into shell variables... for... thing?

ini_to_env.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""A simple ini config parser, which parses data passed across STDIN
and echos the values of an ini file to the local environment
as KEY=VALUE pairs based on the section of the ini file that they're in.

For example, the key "name" in section "config" would look like this:
\t[config]
\tname=value

This would be echoed back as:
CONFIG_NAME=value
"""

import sys, re, argparse, ConfigParser

PARSER = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__,
                                    formatter_class=argparse.RawDescriptionHelpFormatter)
PARSER.add_argument('-p', '--prefix', default='',
                    help='prepend each value with an arbitrary string')

ARGS = PARSER.parse_args()

CONFIG = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
CONFIG.readfp(sys.stdin)

for sec in CONFIG.sections():
    for key, val in CONFIG.items(sec):
        print("%s%s_%s=\"%s\"" % (ARGS.prefix, re.sub(r'[\s.:-]', '_', sec.upper()), key.upper(), val))