AutoHotkey Community

You forgot about portability. If I see a good program first thing I do is to check is it using registry or ini. If it uses registry, I create custom installation that will simulate regular installation. If it use ini, I do nothing.

So.. first, there was ini, then there was registry, then we are back to ini again. Because we hate installing on every single computer and we like portable programs.

I use exclusively portable programs so my fresh system procedure is like: Install Office, Install Visual Studio, Install Delphi and that's it. Everything else is on portable place, except hard-core integrating apps about 100 or more every day apps, including AutoHotKey which I installed once & forever. Even my Photoshop (together with 100 plugins), Nero, FL Studio (together with >100 plugins and utilities) and things like that are in portable place.

I must say that AHK is the next step in my life for creating portable installations for programms that I previosly didn't succeed to "portalise" since I can simulate everything.

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Basically, I agree with you, I always preferred programs leaving the registry alone, unless really needed (associations, shell, etc.).

I meant that INI files are limited (size, syntax) and their main advantage is to use a familiar syntax and are (still) managed by built-in functions that are quite efficient (caching), plus writing is straightforward.

But one may prefer to use a more modern format, like XML (too often an overkill, even more for simple configuration, but may be useful for data exchange), Java's .properties files, or some custom format allowing hierarchical storing of data.

In short, INI files are good for settings, but rather inappropriate to store large body of data, like I see some people using them for that.

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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

Of course PhilLo.

XML is cool but overkill especially for small utils like those created with AHK.

You could eventually use REGISTRY syntax to simulate hierarchy, that is:

instead [Section]
use [Section1\Section2....]

Now, I guess, IniReadEx (great story above) could be extended to take this into account and also partial keys (like, give me all cmdXX keys)

When we are talking about XML, how fast are XML readers and writers developed here by.. hm.. I can't remeber, but you will certanly know. I started once xmlreader and it seemed slow.

Also, I understood that DllCalls can be speeded up by using #NoEnv. Am I right ? Or that just apply to non quoted types.

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Yes