IniRead Orphaned Keys

[psylem]

Ok, I've done some research and it's very not standard behaviour in an ini file. But what happens if you want to read some values from an ini file that has some stuff that is outside of any section?

I've tried...

IniRead("Test.INI","default", "screen_x", "0")

IniRead("Test.INI","", "screen_x", "0")

But no joy. Assuming I only have read access to this file, is there any way of getting the values using IniRead? Or do I have to code something to read the lines in the file?

[Jos]

Ok, I've done some research and it's very not standard behaviour in an ini file. But what happens if you want to read some values from an ini file that has some stuff that is outside of any section?

I've tried...

IniRead("Test.INI","default", "screen_x", "0")

IniRead("Test.INI","", "screen_x", "0")

But no joy. Assuming I only have read access to this file, is there any way of getting the values using IniRead? Or do I have to code something to read the lines in the file?

Doubt if you can call something a INI file when it doesn't contain sections.

You will have to "FileRead" it yourself and scan for the right record.

[MrCreatoR]

psylem

Read in the help file, the structure of Ini file is like this:

[SectionName]
Key=Value

If you triyng to get some values of file that looks like this:

Text
Key=Value

Then as JdeB says, you will need to read the file and find needed string (maybe StringRegExp will help here).

[psylem]

Well it is mostly an ini file, but also includes key/value pairs before the first section is declared. The application that uses it is not my own, so I have no control over that. But I want to read from it, so I've come up with this workaround...

Func _IniRead($filename, $section, $key, $default)
    If $section = "" Then
        Local $retValue = $default
        Local $i = 0
        Local $fileText = StringSplit(FileRead($filename),@CRLF)
        Local $keyValuePair
        While $i < $FileText[0] and StringLeft(StringStripWS($FileText[$i],3),1) <> "["
            $i = $i + 1
            If StringLeft($FileText[$i],StringLen($key)) = $key Then
                ;Lets check this line...
                $keyValuePair = StringSplit($FileText[$i],"=")
                If $keyValuePair[0] > 1 and StringStripWS($keyValuePair[1],3) = $key Then
                    Return StringStripWS($keyValuePair[2],3)
                EndIf
            EndIf
        WEnd
        Return $retValue
    Else
        return IniRead($filename, $section, $key, $default)
    EndIf
EndFunc

It needs some tweaking, but it works for me. When $section = "" then it searches through the unsectioned top of the file manually, but it wont work too well if the value contains any '=' signs.

[psylem]

In fact I came up with a better solution, just create a temp file with a [default] section at the top (or some label that will pretty much always be unique) and work with this. Then if you need to make changes it's easy. Once you want to commit the changes, delete the original ini file and copy the contents of the temp file minus the first [default] section line. This way makes it easier for autoit scripting and the ini's owner application will be none the wiser.