[boost] Re: boost::program_options INI file parsing

From: Preston A. Elder (prez_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-14 02:15:09

On Sat, 14 May 2005 09:50:58 +0400, Vladimir Prus wrote:

> Sorry, this is not a selling point, it's a drawback. For a simple task like
> parsing ini files Spirit is a overkill. To be specific:
> 1. Spirit does not work with borland, while program_options does. I don't
> want to do as serialization do, and require older Spirit for borland --
> that's maintenance nightlmare.
> 2. IIRC, there were reports of Spirit problems on darwin and on VC 8.0, and
> I don't want to be affected by those. 
Fair enough :)

To be completely honest, my INI parser also gave me a chance to learn how
to use a lexical parser too :P

> I'd be happy to stick to standards provided you give an URL to those
> standards ;-)

The quickest google search ('INI file format') showed up:
http://cloanto.com/specs/ini.html
http://www.lisp-p.org/pil/

These are not authorative (its difficult to find authorative sources since
most search hits are talking about the syntax of a specific INI file). 
They do illustrate what I was saying (though they exclude '# comments
only on its own line', but this could be an innovation of unix people
using INI files).

As anecdotal evidence, all microsoft INI files follow this scheme, and the
vi syntax highlighting also recognizes this scheme ;)

In any case, whether '#' is or is not recognized as a comment, its
certainly never recognized as a comment mid-way through a line in an INI
file, and a ';' is always recognized as a comment in an INI file.

-- 
PreZ :)
Founder. The Neuromancy Society (http://www.neuromancy.net)