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Unix Programming - Data File Metaformats - Windows INI Format
Windows INI Format
Many Microsoft Windows programs use a textual data format that
looks like Example5.6. This example associates
optional resources named account,
directory, numeric_id, and developer with named projects python, sng, fetchmail, and py-howto. The DEFAULT entry supplies values
that will be used when a named entry fails to supply them.
Example5.6.A .INI file example.
[DEFAULT]
account = esr
[python]
directory = /home/esr/cvs/python/
developer = 1
[sng]
directory = /home/esr/WWW/sng/
numeric_id = 1012
developer = 1
[fetchmail]
numeric_id = 18364
[py-howto]
account = eric
directory = /home/esr/cvs/py-howto/
developer = 1
This style of data-file format is not native to Unix, but some
Linux programs (notably Samba, the suite of tools for accessing
Windows file shares from Linux) support it under Windows's influence.
This format is readable and not badly designed, but like XML it
doesn't play well with
grep(1)
or conventional Unix scripting tools.
The .INI format is appropriate if your data naturally falls into
its two-level organization of name-attribute pairs clustered under
named records or sections. It's not good for data with a fully
recursive treelike structure (XML is more appropriate for that),
and it would be overkill for a simple list of name-value
associations (use DSV format for that).
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