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To achieve that, you need regular ahk commands too. The ini functions are used to read and store whole entries. You have to parse the value for yourself. It depends on the content, if the real content looks exact the same, then you could use the following lines. Lets see how this could be done: Note, the following examples are made for learning, not as fast and efficient as possible.


For next example, you can easily delete whole sections. But if you want put a section in a specific order, you have to parse the whole ini content and rebuild it. There is no command to put a section at desired place. In general there is no need for that.
Also why do you delete it, if you want preserve the place for it? Sure, there are some possibilities. Hmm lets see how this could be solved...

The more efficient way would be to generate global variables with ini_exportToGlobals() from the ini structure and work with them. The above example was just for showing and learning.

Also, you could add the section by first retrieving the position in string where you want and insert it at that place with internal commands of ahk. That is much faster.

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Wow, thank you for such detail. It has helped me learn.

You see, I made a program that goes through the ini with a counter and when its done, and it sees no more, it exits.
counter += 1

So my INI is
[1]
stuff=1212321
stuff2=1231r3
[2]
omgoodness=wef3r
man=22dwfd
[3]
lala=3322

So my worry was, when I remove [2], my program would freak out.

Man, I understand most of your instructions, but I keep wondering if there is a better way to do this..
I will dive in now and test what you have given me. I am very thankful you put in the comments.

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Never loose this attitude (hope its the correct word for this).

I am sure that there are better ways. The examples are just for demonstration purpose (sorry I repeat me again ).

It depends on your program and what you are really trying todo. Here is another idea. Do not completly delete the section. Leave the section header "[4]" without its keys. Later you can replace the empty section with your own section.

Example:

But you have to be sure, the section 4 is all the time in the ini. Because ini_replace-functions do not insert if it is not already found.

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I see what you are saying and I have spent a lot of time with that additude. Sometimes, I get too caught up in it and my wife misses me ..

As for the thing I am trying to do is to store the information my program needs in the ini, and then I have it go through each,
[1]
bla=item23
blasubject=hi mom
placewhereitsat=California


so now my program uses the var like
iniread, bla, myini.ini, %counter%, bla
iniread, blasubject, myini.ini, %counter%, blasubject
iniread, placewhereitsat, myini.ini, %counter%, placewhereitsat

then my program uses that info do do what it does, then it increases the counter +=1

and does the next one...

It also has a total amount var that is also kept in the INI

It reads it at the beining of the code,


that gives me the total and when running the program, when it reaches the end, it does the exitsub...



So, when I remove, [4] and replace it with "modified" or junk, my ini will freak out.
So, when it comes to it, and I delete one, I need to have real data in the right places, or maybe...
(I just thought of a way)
I could have an
"isactive=yes" instead of using the "city=" and ERROR
if yes, the counter goes up, if no, it does not and skips it..

That would be better, right?
Then I will not need to go through all this.

I am not sure if I understand you. If you are using my ini library, then you should not need the internal IniRead commands from AutoHotkey.

Your code to get the total number looks quirky. To get the total number, try this:

There is also one function to make global variables out of a ini file or structure. Then you can work faster on these variables.

Is it possible that you post your full code and ini file? Seeing it could help to understand better. In example, I do not know why your examples are with the Ahk commands IniRead and IniWrite, if you are using my library.

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I'm not sure if your interested in this, but.

I created a faster ini_insertvalue() function by editing yours a little. It's faster then the normal way and gets faster compared to the normal way the larger the ini variable gets.



I tested it with a few basic things and it seems to function correctly. It's a optional code section, you can use the normal way by passing ini_insertValue(ini, "header", "key", "AndMoreText") or you can use the new way by passing ini_insertValue(ini, "header", "key", "AndMoreText", False,1).

I haven't 100% tested it because I don't know what all can go wrong with inis. I tried to follow how yours worked for error checking and such.

All the tests I did do seemed to work perfectly.

-Robert

Hi rseding91,
I consider your changes and will test them. Unfortunately, in the past I lost my comprehensive test suite for this library, due to a hardware crash. We have now 04:15 here and I do not have time to inspect your code. I thank you for the suggestion. First I will write a test suite again. Then I report my results.

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Yes, I am using it, thankyou for helping me, your INI took some learning, but man is it fast and smart!

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These words make me happy.

@rseding91
I am building new test cases for the library. This can take some time, as I have very little time for Ahk. Your change will be tested too, but first I need to understand what you have done.
After looking into the code, I have some critcism:

That is one of the reason why I made this library. It works with one regex call. The regex works in far more situations than this construct. If I would use this construct, then I had to alter all other regexes too. Yes InStr() is faster that RegEx, but InStr is not rock solid and flexible.
In example, a keys value could contain the "[" and "]" characters. Or whitespace between "[" and section name.
And similiar arguments apply to following construct too

Correct: The key is searched after the sections location. ...but...
Your construct does not cover whitespace before, between the "=" and keyname.
And also it could interfere with out commented keys or sections, which should not be detected by the parser.
And I like to have one Return command per function. It might be faster to return immadiately, readability is important to me too (old rule: Just one return per function).

Sorry to say that, but this construct is too unsure to me. The regex covers many things in one call. If a full regex compatible construct would be created, then it would may be slower than the counterpart. Also have in mind, someone "can" use regular expression to find a key. Also the ability to search for a key without knowing the section could be used sometimes too. (And comments and different sets of newlines are not covered in my example too.) Example:

Would find the first found one with a digit. Its just a possibility. (Example is done via getValue to show what the regex can. This applies to other functions too.)
Here is an example What i mean. Try this with your modified version:

I know, in most cases it would work. But I have to disappoint you. The change will not be integrated.

For big ini sources, it would be wise not to work with regex. Then I suggest to export the whole structure to variables and after work, build the ini from the variables. Or just read the one key to modify, and modify its content how often you like with simple assignment operators, and then reassign the keys content "once" with insertValue.

If you really like to work with your modified version, then I suggest to make a lib called "inialt.ahk" (alt for alternative) and rename the function to "inialt_insertValue". Or something similiar. Then you have the one alternative version in coexistence with the "official" version in another file.

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Ah that's ok.

I just made it to see if I could

I knew it wasn't perfect - it was limited in that it only worked if you had your ini setup properly(the way your fix ini function sets it up).

If you want to use anything in it feel free. I had a thought on how you could make the entire function SUPER fast but it would require some fancy code

Set each Header/key to a variable name such as:



But that would get into all of the "can this text be a variable name?" stuff and I don't know what else

Hmm... to make the functions faster, we could provide alternative functions. The new functions would require (if not already in right format) to call the ini with the repair function ini_repair() once. Then the alternative functions can be sure to have the ini in "correct" or "strict" format.

Currently I have not time to build such functions; building new correct unit tests take my time now. And I am not sure if someone need such faster alternatives.

How many people use ini files? Is it still common today with AutoHotkey?

I myself use the ini functions to store some settings in one variable, which they are accessible from any function in a script, without being globals (with the exception of one variable, if it is not encapsulated in another function via static).

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Hi Tuncay

I have a feature request.

I have an ini file with the same keys under different sections.

[Section1]
Key1=A
[Section2]
Key1=B
[Section3]
Key1=C

I would like to see a function that returns a list of the values of all keys named Key1, without necessarily know the names of the sections.

Key1Values := ini_getAllValuesOfKey(Key1)

Would return A,B,C

Does that seem like a worthwhile option?

I don`t think that I would make a new regex based function to resolve request. It is easy to combine functions to get what you need. You can

And then parse the list with


I think it is too specific to make a dedicated function. Currently, I stopped the development. Just wrap these calls as a single function. I could do this for you, but have currently no time for that.

Does this the job get done? Hope there is no speed concern.

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That makes perfect sense. Thank you for your reply.

Hi, me again.
uhh.. Ini_Write doesn't seem to work?

and I get this: http://i51.tinypic.com/73nn0o.png

i've tried many combos. nothing works. I've even tried ini_replaceValue().

is anything special needed for ini_write?

edit: I worked around it by doing this:

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