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INI file
An INI file is a configuration file for computer software that consists of plain text with a structure and syntax comprising key–value pairs organized in sections.[1] The name of these configuration files comes from the filename extension INI, short for initialization, used in the MS-DOS operating system which popularized this method of software configuration. The format has become an informal standard in many contexts of configuration, but many applications on other operating systems use different file name extensions, such as conf and cfg.[2] HistoryThe primary mechanism of software configuration in Windows was originally a text file format that comprised text lines with one key–value pair per line, organized into sections. This format was used for operating system components, such as device drivers, fonts, and startup launchers. INI files were also generally used by applications to store individual settings.[3] The format was maintained in 16-bit Microsoft Windows platforms up through Windows 3.1x. Starting with Windows 95 Microsoft favored the use of the Windows Registry and began to steer developers away from using INI files for configuration. All subsequent versions of Windows have used the Windows Registry for system configuration, but applications built on the .NET Framework use special XML .config files. The initialization-file functions are still available in Windows and developers may still use them. Besides Windows software, platform-agnostic software may use this file format for configuration. Some Unix-like config files also use a similar format. INI is human-readable and simple to parse, so it is a usable format for configuration files that do not require much greater complexity. PrevalenceWhat follows is a non-exhaustive list of places in which INI files appear.
ExampleThe following example file has two sections: one for the owner of the software, and one for a payroll database connection. Comments record the last person who modified the file and the reason for modification. ; last modified 1 April 2001 by John Doe
[owner]
name = John Doe
organization = Acme Widgets Inc.
[database]
; use IP address in case network name resolution is not working
server = 192.0.2.62
port = 143
file = "payroll.dat"
FormatIn its broader sense, INI is an informal format which lends itself well to ad-hoc implementation while remaining human-configurable. Consequently, many varying specifications (where sometimes a parser implementation is the only specification ever written) exist, called INI dialects. INI interpretations depend a lot on personal taste and the needs of the computing environment, such as whitespace preservation, field type information, case sensitivity, or preferred comment delimiters. This makes INI prone to proliferation. Nonetheless, INI-flavoured implementations typically share common design features: a text file consisting of a key-value pair on each line, delimited by an equals sign, organized into sections denoted by square brackets. Attempts to create parsers able to support as many dialects as possible exist,[13] and in its most complicated interpretation, the INI format is able to express arbitrary S-expressions, making it equivalent to standardised formats like XML or JSON, albeit with a syntax which is not set in stone and to some may feel more comfortable. As the INI file format is not rigidly defined, many parsers support features beyond those that form the common core. Implemented support is highly volatile. Key-value pairsData in INI is held in key-value pairs called key or property. Key may thus either refer to the entire key-value pair or only its key. A value is also called property name. In its textual representation, the key-value pair is represented by either a line or a multiline where the start of the value is indicated by a delimiter, most often an equals sign ( In the Windows implementation, the equals sign and the semicolon are reserved characters and cannot appear in the key. Any whitespace surrounding the key is stripped by the parser. The value can contain any character (in Windows-style, no whitespace surrounds the delimiter: e.g. Key-value pairs may textually look like: key=key=v
name =value
sem=;
semver=v5822.433.2
SectionsKey-value pairs may be grouped under a section. Some INI dialects require every key-value pair to be in a section, some allow so-called global properties.[14] When key-value pairs are grouped, the section name appears on a line by itself, enclosed in square brackets ( Exemplary INI document employing nested sections: [project]
name = orchard rental service (with app)
target region = "Bay Area"
; TODO: advertise vacant positions
legal team = (vacant)
[fruit "Apple"]
trademark issues = foreseeable
taste = known
[fruit.Date]
taste = novel
Trademark Issues="truly unlikely"
[fruit "Raspberry"]
anticipated problems ="logistics (fragile fruit)"
Trademark Issues=\
possible
[fruit.raspberry.proponents.fred]
date = 2021-11-23, 08:54 +0900
comment = "I like red fruit."
[fruit "Date/proponents/alfred"]
comment: Why, \
\
\
I would buy dates.
# folding: Is "\\\\\nn" interpreted as "\\n" or "\n"?
# Or does "\\\\" prevent folding?
editor =My name may contain a \\
newline.
Hierarchy (section nesting)Some parsers allow section nesting, using dots as path delimiters: [section]
domain = example.com
[section.subsection]
foo = bar
In some cases relative nesting is supported too, where a leading dot expresses nesting to the previous section:[13] [section]
domain = example.com
[.subsection]
foo = bar
Historically, ways for expressing nesting alternative to the dot have existed too (for example, IBM's driver file for Microsoft Windows Case sensitivitySection and property names in Windows are case insensitive.[15] Most Unix-style INI interpretations forbid case folding altogether, although case folding for the section name[16] or key[17] is sometimes allowed. CommentsA line with contiguous trailing whitespace followed by a semicolon ( #! /bin/convert-ini-to-perl | perl | ssh wikipedia.org upload --sanitise=no
; Ambiguous without further knowledge of the INI dialect:
; is the value "live" or "live # dangerously"?
I like to = live # dangerously
#var = a
var = a ; This is an inline comment
foo = bar # This is another inline comment
Under the WinAPI's GetPrivateProfileString's dialect, comments must occur on lines by themselves. Order of sections and propertiesThe order of properties in a section and the order of sections in a file is irrelevant. Duplicate namesMost implementations only support having one property with a given name in a section. The second occurrence of a property name may cause an abort, it may be ignored (and the value discarded), or it may override the first occurrence (with the first value discarded). Some programs use duplicate property names to implement multi-valued properties. Interpretation of multiple section declarations with the same name also varies. In some implementations, duplicate sections simply merge their properties, as if they occurred contiguously. Others may abort, or ignore some aspect of the INI file. Quoted valuesSome implementations allow values to be quoted, typically using double quotes and/or apostrophes. This allows for explicit declaration of whitespace, and/or for quoting of special characters (equals, semicolon, etc.). The standard Windows function GetPrivateProfileString supports this, and will remove quotation marks that surround the values. Line continuationEmulating C syntax, some dialects allow line folding by a backslash ( Escape charactersSome dialects offer varying support for character escaping, typically with the backslash character ( It is not wise to blindly interpret escape sequences as some specifications explicitly mute their metacharacter for common escape sequences.[20][21]
Accessing INI filesUnder Windows, the Profile API is the programming interface used to read and write settings from classic Windows The following sample C program demonstrates reading property values from the above sample INI file (let the name of configuration file be #include <windows.h>
int main(int argc, _TCHAR *argv[])
{
_TCHAR dbserver[1000];
int dbport;
GetPrivateProfileString("database", "server", "127.0.0.1", dbserver, sizeof(dbserver) / sizeof(dbserver[0]), ".\\dbsettings.ini");
dbport = GetPrivateProfileInt("database", "port", 143, ".\\dbsettings.ini");
// N.B. WritePrivateProfileInt() does not exist, only WritePrivateProfileString()
return 0;
}
The third parameter of the Under Unix, many different configuration libraries exist to access INI files. They are often already included in frameworks and toolkits. Examples of INI parsers for Unix include GLib, iniparser and libconfini. Comparison of INI parsers
File mappingInitialization file mapping creates a mapping between an INI file and the Windows registry.[60][61] It was introduced with Windows NT and Windows 95 as a way to migrate from storing settings in classic Using the example below, a string call could be made to fetch the name key from the owner section from a settings file called, say, GetPrivateProfileString("owner", "name", ... , "c:\\programs\\oldprogram\\dbsettings.ini");
INI mapping takes this Profile API call, ignores any path in the given filename and checks to see if there is a Registry key matching the filename under the directory:
If this exists, it looks for an entry name matching the requested section. If an entry is found, INI mapping uses its value as a pointer to another part of the Registry. It then looks up the requested INI setting in that part of the Registry. If no matching entry name is found and there is an entry under the (Default) entry name, INI mapping uses that instead. Thus each section name does not need its own entry.
So, in this case the profile call for the [owner] section is mapped through to:
where the "name" Registry entry name is found to match the requested INI key. The value of "John Doe" is then returned to the Profile call. In this case, the @ prefix on the default prevents any reads from going to the The "database" Registry entry does not have the @ prefix on the value; thus, for the AlternativesStarting with Windows 95, Microsoft began strongly promoting the use of the Windows registry over INI files.[62] INI files are typically limited to two levels (sections and properties) and do not handle binary data well. This decision, however, has not been immune to critiques, due to the fact that the registry is monolithic, opaque and binary, must be in sync with the filesystem, and represents a single point of failure for the operating system.[63] Later XML-based configuration files became a popular choice for encoding configuration in text files.[citation needed] XML allows arbitrarily complex levels and nesting, and has standard mechanisms for encoding binary data. More recently, data serialization formats, such as JSON, TOML, and YAML can serve as configuration formats. These three alternative formats can nest arbitrarily, but have a different syntax than the INI file. Among them, TOML most closely resembles INI, but the idea to make TOML deliberately compatible with a large subset of INI was rejected.[64] The newest INI parsers however allow the same arbitrary level of nesting of XML, JSON, TOML, and YAML, offer equivalent support of typed values and Unicode, although keep the "informal status" of INI files by allowing multiple syntaxes for expressing the same thing.[65] See also
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