title: How to store preferences for an application?
body: <p>I am a newbie in Ruby coming from web development with mainly PHP/SQL. I was thinking about how I store preferences in my application. For instance, if I want to store a path as <code>default_path</code> and have that set also when the user restarts the application.</p>
  
  <p>In the web world one would probably store this in a database or XML. Database seems overkill for a standalone application. But I am unsure wheter XML/YAML/Other-Write-Format is the way to go. And if so, where should I store these preferences? Should they be, for instance on a Mac, in ~/Library/MyAppName?</p>