A Beginners Guide to INI Files

INI files are configuration files that are used by many programs to store settings. They are typically plain text files with a basic structure consisting of sections denoted by square brackets and key-value pairs withn those sections.

Here is an example of an INI file:

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[section1]
key1 = value1
key2 = value2

[section2]
key3 = value3
key4 = value4

Each section can contain multiple key-value pairs, and the text denotes the section name within the square brackets. An equal sign separates the key and value; the value can be a string, a number, or a boolean value (e.g. true or false).

INI files are often used to store program settings, such as the file's location or window size. They can also store data that needs to be shared between multiple programs or modules.

INI files can be read and written using a variety of programming languages, including C, C++, and Python. Many libraries and utilities are also available for working with INI files in different languages.

Comments

In INI files, comments can be added by starting a line with a semicolon (;) or a hash symbol (#). Anything after the semicolon or hash symbol on that line will be ignored by the program reading the INI file.

Example of comments in INI files.

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; This is a comment
# This is also a comment

[section1]
key1 = value1 ; This is a comment on the same line as a key-value pair
key2 = value2

[section2]
# This is a comment on its own line
key3 = value3
key4 = value4

Escape Characters

In INI files, certain characters have special meanings and need to be escaped if they are to be treated as literal characters. For example, the equal sign (=) is used to separate keys from values, and the square brackets ([ and ]) are used to denote sections.

The following are some escape characters supported by INI parsers.

\\	\ (single backslash, escape escape character)
\'	apostrophe
\"	double quotes
\0	null character
\a	ringtone/alert/sound
\b	Backspace, [Bell character] for some applications (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_character)
\t	tab character
\r	carriage return
\n	newline
\;	semicolon
\#	number sign
\=	equal sign
\:	colon
\x????	Unicode character for the hexadecimal code point corresponding to ????