aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/iniparser-4.1/doc/iniparser.main
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'iniparser-4.1/doc/iniparser.main')
-rw-r--r--iniparser-4.1/doc/iniparser.main207
1 files changed, 207 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/iniparser-4.1/doc/iniparser.main b/iniparser-4.1/doc/iniparser.main
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47747c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/iniparser-4.1/doc/iniparser.main
@@ -0,0 +1,207 @@
+
+/**
+
+ @mainpage iniparser documentation
+
+
+ @section welcome Introduction
+
+ iniParser is a simple C library offering ini file parsing services.
+ The library is pretty small (less than 1500 lines of C) and robust, and
+ does not depend on any other external library to compile. It is written
+ in ANSI C and should compile on most platforms without difficulty.
+
+
+ @section inidef What is an ini file?
+
+ An ini file is an ASCII file describing simple parameters
+ (character strings, integers, floating-point values or booleans)
+ in an explicit format, easy to use and modify for users.
+
+ An ini file is segmented into Sections, declared by the following
+ syntax:
+
+ @verbatim
+ [Section Name]
+ @endverbatim
+
+ i.e. the section name enclosed in square brackets, alone on a
+ line. Sections names are allowed to contain any character but
+ square brackets or linefeeds.
+
+ In any section are zero or more variables, declared with the
+ following syntax:
+
+ @verbatim
+ Key = value ; comment
+ @endverbatim
+
+ The key is any string (possibly containing blanks). The value is
+ any character on the right side of the equal sign. Values can be
+ given enclosed with quotes. If no quotes are present, the value is
+ understood as containing all characters between the first and the
+ last non-blank characters before the comment. The following
+ declarations are identical:
+
+ @verbatim
+ Hello = "this is a long string value" ; comment
+ Hello = this is a long string value ; comment
+ @endverbatim
+
+ The semicolon and comment at the end of the line are optional. If
+ there is a comment, it starts from the first character after the
+ semicolon up to the end of the line.
+
+ Multi-line values can be provided by ending the line with a
+ backslash (\).
+
+ @verbatim
+ Multiple = Line 1 \
+ Line 2 \
+ Line 3 \
+ Line 4 ; comment
+ @endverbatim
+
+ This would yield: "multiple" <- "Line1 Line2 Line3 Line4"
+
+ Comments in an ini file are:
+
+ - Lines starting with a hash sign
+ - Blank lines (only blanks or tabs)
+ - Comments given on value lines after the semicolon (if present)
+
+
+ @section install Compiling/installing the library
+
+ Edit the Makefile to indicate the C compiler you want to use, the
+ options to provide to compile ANSI C, and possibly the options to pass
+ to the ar program on your machine to build a library (.a) from a set
+ of object (.o) files.
+
+ Defaults are set for the gcc compiler and the standard ar library
+ builder.
+
+ Type 'make', that should do it.
+
+ To use the library in your programs, add the following line on top
+ of your module:
+
+ @code
+ #include "iniparser.h"
+ @endcode
+
+ And link your program with the iniparser library by adding
+ @c -liniparser.a to the compile line.
+
+ See the file test/initest.c for an example.
+
+ iniparser is an ANSI C library. If you want to compile it
+ with a C++ compiler you will likely run into compatibility
+ issues. Headers probably have to include the extern "C"
+ hack and function prototypes will want to add some const
+ here and there to keep the compiler happy. This job is left
+ to the reader as there are too many C++ compilers around, each
+ with its own requirements as to what represents acceptable
+ C code in a C++ environment. You have been warned.
+
+
+ @section reference Library reference
+
+ The library is completely documented in its header file. On-line
+ documentation has been generated and can be consulted here:
+
+ - iniparser.h
+
+
+ @section usage Using the parser
+
+ Comments are discarded by the parser. Then sections are
+ identified, and in each section a new entry is created for every
+ keyword found. The keywords are stored with the following syntax:
+
+ @verbatim
+ [Section]
+ Keyword = value ; comment
+ @endverbatim
+
+ is converted to the following key pair:
+
+ @verbatim
+ ("section:keyword", "value")
+ @endverbatim
+
+ This means that if you want to retrieve the value that was stored
+ in the section called @c Pizza, in the keyword @c Cheese,
+ you would make a request to the dictionary for
+ @c "pizza:cheese". All section and keyword names are converted
+ to lowercase before storage in the structure. The value side is
+ conserved as it has been parsed, though.
+
+ Section names are also stored in the structure. They are stored
+ using as key the section name, and a NULL associated value. They
+ can be queried through iniparser_find_entry().
+
+ To launch the parser, use the function called iniparser_load(), which
+ takes an input file name and returns a newly allocated @e dictionary
+ structure. This latter object should remain opaque to the user and only
+ accessed through the following accessor functions:
+
+ - iniparser_getstring()
+ - iniparser_getint()
+ - iniparser_getdouble()
+ - iniparser_getboolean()
+
+ Finally, discard this structure using iniparser_freedict().
+
+ All values parsed from the ini file are stored as strings. The
+ accessors are just converting these strings to the requested type on
+ the fly, but you could basically perform this conversion by yourself
+ after having called the string accessor.
+
+ Notice that iniparser_getboolean() will return an integer (0 or 1),
+ trying to make sense of what was found in the file. Strings starting
+ with "y", "Y", "t", "T" or "1" are considered true values (return 1),
+ strings starting with "n", "N", "f", "F", "0" are considered false
+ (return 0). This allows some flexibility in handling of boolean
+ answers.
+
+ If you want to add extra information into the structure that was not
+ present in the ini file, you can use iniparser_set() to insert a
+ string.
+
+ If you want to add a section to the structure, add a key
+ with a NULL value. Example:
+ @verbatim
+ iniparser_set(ini, "section", NULL);
+ iniparser_set(ini, "section:key1", NULL);
+ iniparser_set(ini, "section:key2", NULL);
+ @endverbatim
+
+
+ @section implementation A word about the implementation
+
+ The dictionary structure is a pretty simple dictionary
+ implementation which might find some uses in other applications.
+ If you are curious, look into the source.
+
+
+ @section defects Known defects
+
+ The dictionary structure is extremely unefficient for searching
+ as keys are sorted in the same order as they are read from the
+ ini file, which is convenient when dumping back to a file. The
+ simplistic first-approach linear search implemented there can
+ become a bottleneck if you have a very large number of keys.
+
+ People who need to load large amounts of data from an ini file
+ should definitely turn to more appropriate solutions: sqlite3 or
+ similar. There are otherwise many other dictionary implementations
+ available on the net to replace this one.
+
+
+ @section authors Authors
+
+ Nicolas Devillard (ndevilla AT free DOT fr).
+
+
+*/