Externalizing a List of Values

Hi,

I'm wondering what the correct way to externalize a list of values is? In the app I'm working on, I need to pass in a list of store numbers to a bean. I'd like to externalize the list so it doesn't need to be hardcoded in the bean configuration file but instead can be read from an external file. I'd like my bean configuration to look something like:

Code:

---

<bean id="messageUtility" class="com.mycompany.MessageUtility">
        <property name="pilotStoreNumbers" value="${myfile.storeNumbers}" />
 </bean>

---

The problem with this approach is I'm unsure how to specify the list in the external file.

Can this be done?