A tiny ANSI C library for loading .ini config files

The files ini.c and ini.h should be dropped into an existing project.

The library has support for sections, comment lines and quoted string values (with escapes). Unquoted values and keys are trimmed of whitespace when loaded.

; last modified 1 April 2001 by John Doe
[owner]
name = John Doe
organization = Acme Widgets Inc.

[database]
; use IP address in case network name resolution is not working
server = 192.0.2.62     
port = 143
file = "payroll.dat"

An ini file can be loaded into memory by using the ini_load() function. NULL is returned if the file cannot be loaded.

ini_t *config = ini_load("config.ini");

The library provides two functions for retrieving values: the first is ini_get(). Given a section and a key the corresponding value is returned if it exists. If the section argument is NULL then all sections are searched.

const char *name = ini_get(config, "owner", "name");
if (name) {
  printf("name: %s\n", name);
}

The second, ini_sget(), takes the same arguments as ini_get() with the addition of a scanf format string and a pointer for where to store the value.

const char *server = "default";
int port = 80;

ini_sget(config, "database", "server", NULL, &server);
ini_sget(config, "database", "port", "%d", &port);

printf("server: %s:%d\n", server, port);

The ini_free() function is used to free the memory used by the ini_t* object when we are done with it. Calling this function invalidates all string pointers returned by the library.

ini_free(config);

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.