On the Rails for PHP blog today, there's a new article talking about a method that is normally used to handle configuration files and the like - YAML:

Besides PHP itself, the most popular config file formats for PHP applications are INI and XML files. [...] YAML is a relatively new format that has been pioneered by the Ruby and Rails communities. It blends the best aspects of XML and INI, giving us a format with the flexibility of XML and the ease-of-use of INI.

He compares the YAML support - Ruby's built-in support and PHP's functionality via either the Spyc library/Syck extension or through a PEAR package from the Horde functionality. Quick code snippets are provided for each.