bash_ini_parser -- Simple INI file parser

This is a comfortable and simple INI file parser to be used in bash scripts.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2009 Kevin Porter / Advanced Web Construction Ltd (http://coding.tinternet.info / http://webutils.co.uk) Copyright (c) 2010-2014 Ruediger Meier [email protected] (https://github.com/rudimeier/)

License: BSD-3-Clause, see LICENSE file

USAGE

You must source the bash file into your script:

. read_ini.sh

and then use the read_ini function, defined as:

read_ini INI_FILE [SECTION] [[--prefix|-p] PREFIX] [[--booleans|b] [0|1]]

If SECTION is supplied, then only the specified section of the file will be processed.

After running the read_ini function, variables corresponding to the ini file entries will be available to you. Naming convention for variable names is:

PREFIX__SECTION__VARNAME

PREFIX is 'INI' by default (but can be changed with the --prefix option), SECTION and VARNAME are the section name and variable name respectively.

Additionally you can get a list of all these variable names: PREFIX__ALL_VARS and get a list of sections: PREFIX__ALL_SECTIONS and the number of sections: PREFIX__NUMSECTIONS

For example, to read and output the variables of this ini file:

-- START test1.ini file

var1="VAR 1" var2 = VAR 2

[section1] var1="section1 VAR 1" var2= section1 VAR 2

-- END test1.ini file

you could do this:

-- START bash script

. read_ini.sh

read_ini test1.ini

echo "var1 = ${INI__var1}" echo "var2 = ${INI__var2}" echo "section1 var1 = ${INI__section1__var1}" echo "section1 var2 = ${INI__section1__var2}"

echo "list of all ini vars: ${INI__ALL_VARS}" echo "number of sections: ${INI__NUMSECTIONS}"

-- END bash script

OPTIONS

[--prefix | -p] PREFIX String to prepend to generated variable names (automatically followed by '__'). Default: INI

[--booleans | -b] [0|1] Whether to interpret special unquoted string values 'yes', 'no', 'true', 'false', 'on', 'off' as booleans. Default: 1

INI FILE FORMAT

• Variables are stored as name/value pairs, eg: var=value

• Leading and trailing whitespace of the name and the value is discarded.

• Use double or single quotes to get whitespace in the values

• Section names in square brackets, eg: [section1] var1 = value

• Variable names can be re-used between sections (or out of section), eg: var1=value [section1] var1=value [section3] var1=value

• Dots are converted to underscores in all variable names.

• Special boolean values: unquoted strings 'yes', 'true' and 'on' are interpreted as 1; 'no', 'false' and 'off' are interpreted as 0