| Description: | Although made popular by Windows, INI files can be used on any system thanks
to their flexibility. They allow a program to store configuration data, which
can then be easily parsed and changed. Two notable systems that use the INI
format are Samba and Trac.
More information about INI files can be found on the [Wikipedia
Page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file).
The basic element contained in an INI file is the property. Every property has
a name and a value, delimited by an equals sign *=*. The name appears to the
left of the equals sign and the value to the right.
name=value
Section declarations start with *[* and end with *]* as in `[section1]` and
`[section2]` shown in the example below. The section declaration marks the
beginning of a section. All properties after the section declaration will be
associated with that section.
All lines beginning with a semicolon *;* or a number sign *#* are considered
to be comments. Comment lines are ignored when parsing INI files.
A typical INI file might look like this:
[section1]
; some comment on section1
var1 = foo
var2 = doodle
var3 = multiline values \
are also possible
[section2]
var1 = baz
var2 = shoodle. |
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