# Appendix A

### The ini file format

The file format natively supported by this program follows the original ini file format used in Windows. An ini file is a text file with rows of items where each group of items are delimited by a Section. Each Section can contain any number of Name=Value pairs. Each section must be unique within the file. A section is enclosed in square brackets (i.e. [Section]) and the left square bracket must be the first character on the line. The Section can contain spaces. All characters following the right square bracket are ignored.

A Name=Value pair must appears on a single line and the start of the Name must be the first character on the row. A Name can contain any character except the equal sign as it is used as the delimiter before the Value. A Value can contain any characters, including equal signs. Within a Section, a Name must be unique, but a Value doesn't have to be. Sections, Names and Values are handled in a case-insensitive manner. Values may not contain line-break characters. A line starting with a semi-colon is handled as a comment and ignored.

Example:

    ;This is a comment
    [Section]
    Name1=Value1
    Name2=Value2

NOTE: starting with 1.3, IniTranslator can also handle files without any Sections - all items will then be part of an empty Section and a section will not be written to the file when saving. In addition, version 1.3 and later also preserves comments at their original location.