how to: conditonal config

i think the best way to achieve what you want is a hook - below an example

in your application/config/hooks.php

PHP Code:

$hook['pre_controller'][] = array(
    "class" => "AppConfigCustomization",
    "function" => "initialize",
    "filename" => "AppConfigCustomization.php",
    "filepath" => "hooks"
); 


in your application/hooks/ folder put a file named AppConfigCustomization.php

PHP Code:

class AppConfigCustomization
{

    private $ci;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->ci = &get_instance();
    }
    
    
    public function initialize()
    {
        if ($this->ci->session->userdata("is_customer"))
        {
            $this->config->set_item("cache_path","/location/to/my/install/application/cache2");
        }
    }
} 


something like this is clean and should work