Begin main content

Parsing ini files with sed

A while back I found this neat sed pipeline for extracting an ini file section into shell script variables:

INI_FILE=path/to/file.ini
INI_SECTION=TheSection

eval `sed -e 's/[[:space:]]*\=[[:space:]]*/=/g' \
    -e 's/;.*$//' \
    -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//' \
    -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//' \
    -e "s/^\(.*\)=\([^\"']*\)$/\1=\"\2\"/" \
   < $INI_FILE \
    | sed -n -e "/^\[$INI_SECTION\]/,/^\s*\[/{/^[^;].*\=.*/p;}"`
You now have variables in the scope of your shell script derived from the key/value pairs in that section of the ini script. REALLY handy. Thought it might help someone else if I recorded it here. I got it from this thread on debian-administration.org.

NB: the eval is a ksh builtin. I imagine using declare in bash will achieve the same, but I haven't tested it.

NB2: it seems Solaris sed isn't quite up to the task - the above requires gnu sed.

05:07 PM, 08 Nov 2007 by Mark Aufflick Permalink | Short Link | Comments (1)

XML

Blog Categories

software (39)
..cocoa (21)
  ..heads up 'tunes (5)
..ruby (6)
..lisp (3)
..perl (4)
..openacs (1)
mac (20)
embedded (2)
..microprocessor (2)
  ..avr (1)
electronics (3)
design (1)
photography (25)
..black and white (6)
..A day in Sydney (18)
..The Daily Shoot (6)
food (2)
Book Review (2)

Notifications

Icon of Envelope Request notifications

Syndication Feed

XML

Recent Comments

  1. Unregistered Visitor: An other Script
  2. Unregistered Visitor: A message in there?
  3. Unregistered Visitor: using Amazon S3
  4. Unregistered Visitor: Thank you ! Thank you ! Thank you !
  5. Unregistered Visitor: Umbrello on leopard
  6. Unregistered Visitor: Script gor generate for library
  7. Unregistered Visitor: Similar but different
  8. Unregistered Visitor: Thanks for fixing my problem!
  9. Unregistered Visitor: Pop up once the category is been defined
  10. Unregistered Visitor: smal amendment