How do I grab an INI value within a shell script

Question

I have a parameters ini file  such as    parameters ini      database user      user     database version   20110611142248   I want to read in and use the database version specified in the parameters ini file from within a bash shell script so I can process it       bin sh       Need to get database version from parameters ini file to use in script     php app console doctrine migrations migrate  DATABASE VERSION   How would I do this

User · Answer

Just include your  ini file into bash body   File example ini   DBNAME test DBUSER scott DBPASSWORD tiger   File example sh     bin bash  Including  ini file   example ini  Test echo    DBNAME      DBUSER     DBPASSWORD

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Some of the answers don t respect comments   Some don t respect sections   Some recognize only one syntax  only     or only        Some Python answers fail on my machine because of differing captialization or failing to import the sys module   All are a bit too terse for me   So I wrote my own  and if you have a modern Python  you can probably call this from your Bash shell   It has the advantage of adhering to some of the common Python coding conventions  and even provides sensible error messages and help   To use it  name it something like myconfig py  do NOT call it configparser py or it may try to import itself   make it executable  and call it like  value   myconfig py something ini sectionname value    Here s my code for Python 3 5 on Linux      usr bin env python3   Last Modified  Thu Aug  3 13 58 50 PDT 2017    A program that Bash can call to parse an  ini file     import sys import configparser import argparse  if   name         main         parser   argparse ArgumentParser description  A program that Bash can call to parse an  ini file       parser add argument  inifile   help  name of the  ini file       parser add argument  section   help  name of the section in the  ini file       parser add argument  itemname   help  name of the desired value       args   parser parse args        config   configparser ConfigParser       config read args inifile      print config get args section  args itemname

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The answer of  Karen Gabrielyan  among another answers was the best but in some environments we dont have awk  like typical busybox  i changed the answer by below code   trim         local trimmed   1         Strip leading space      trimmed    trimmed            Strip trailing space      trimmed    trimmed           echo   trimmed        function parseIniFile      accepts the name of the file to parse as argument   1           declare syntax below  -gA  only works with bash 4 2 and higher         unset g iniProperties         declare -gA g iniProperties         currentSection            while read -r line         do             if     line            then                 if     line           then                      currentSection   echo  line   sed -e  s  r  g    tr -d                         fi             else                 if     line             then                     cleanLine   echo  line   sed -e  s  r  g                       key   trim  currentSection   echo  cleanLine   cut -d    -f1                        value   trim   echo  cleanLine   cut -d    -f2                       g iniProperties  key   value                 fi             fi          done  lt   1

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If Python is available  the following will read all the sections  keys and values and save them in variables with their names following the format   section   key     Python can read  ini files properly  so we make use of it      bin bash  eval   python3  lt  lt  EOP from configparser import SafeConfigParser  config   SafeConfigParser   config read  config ini     for section in config sections        for  key  val  in config items section           print section         key           val         EOP    echo  Environment type     Environment type   echo  Environment name     Environment name     config ini   Environment    type                  DEV   name                  D01

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sed  You can use sed to parse the ini configuration file  especially when you ve section names like     last modified 1 April 2001 by John Doe  owner  name John Doe organization Acme Widgets Inc    database    use IP address in case network name resolution is not working server 192 0 2 62 port 143 file payroll dat   so you can use the following sed script to parse above data     Configuration bindings found outside any section are given to   to the default section  1     x   s   default    x      Lines starting with a  -character are comments     n    Sections are unpacked and stored in the hold space           s             1    x   b      Bindings are unpacked and decorated with the section   they belong to  before being printed          s     space         s    space        space          G   s        n        2  1    p     this will convert the ini data into this flat format   owner name John Doe owner organization Acme Widgets Inc  database server 192 0 2 62 database port 143 database file payroll dat   so it ll be easier to parse using sed  awk or read by having section names in every line   Credits  amp  source  Configuration files for shell scripts  Michael Gr  newald    Alternatively  you can use this project  chilladx config-parser  a configuration parser using sed

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complex simplicity   ini file  test ini   section1  name1 value1 name2 value2  section2  name1 value 1   name2     value 2   bash script with read and execute   bin parseini     bin bash  set  a while read p  do   reSec                 reNV                              Remove only spaces around name   reNV                               Remove spaces around name and spaces before value   if     p     reSec     then       section   BASH REMATCH 1     elif     p     reNV     then     sNm   section    BASH REMATCH 1       sVa   BASH REMATCH 2       set -a     eval    echo   sNm      sVa          set  a   fi done  lt   1   then in another script I source the results of the command and can use any variables within  test sh     bin bash  source parseini test ini  echo  section2 name2   finally from command line the output is thus      test sh  value 2

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When I use a password in base64  I put the separator     because the base64 string may has      For example  I use ksh     gt  echo  Abc123    base64 QWJjMTIzCg     In parameters ini put the line pass QWJjMTIzCg    and finally    gt  PASS  awk -F      pass   print  2    parameters ini   base64 --decode   gt  echo   PASS  Abc123   If the line has spaces like  pass   QWJjMTIzCg     add   tr -d     to trim them    gt  PASS  awk -F      pass   print  2    parameters ini   tr -d       base64 --decode   gt  echo    PASS    Abc123

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How about grepping for that line then using awk  version   awk -F       database version   print  2   parameters ini

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You can use a CSV parser xsv as parsing INI data   cargo install xsv     cat  etc  release DISTRIB ID Ubuntu DISTRIB RELEASE 16 04 DISTRIB CODENAME xenial     xsv select -d     -  lt  lt  lt      cat  etc  release      xsv search --no-headers --select 1  DISTRIB CODENAME    xsv select 2 xenial   or from a file     xsv select -d     - file ini   xsv search --no-headers --select 1  DISTRIB CODENAME    xsv select 2

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This script will get parameters as follow    meaning that if your ini has       pars ini ksh   lt  path to ini file     lt  name of Sector in Ini file    lt  the name in name value to return     eg  how to call it        environment       a x     DataBase Sector       DSN   something     Then calling        pars ini ksh  users bubu user parameters ini  DataBase Sector DSN   this will retrieve the following  something    the script  pars ini ksh          bin ksh    INI FILE path to file ini    INI SECTION TheSection     BEGIN parse-ini-file sh     SET UP THE MINIMUM VARS FIRST  alias sed  usr local bin sed  INI FILE  1  INI SECTION  2  INI NAME  3  INI VALUE      eval  sed -e  s    space         space       g         -e  s                -e  s    space                -e  s     space               -e  s                       1    2            lt   INI FILE           sed -n -e       INI SECTION       s                  p       TEMP VALUE  echo     INI NAME   echo  eval echo  TEMP VALUE

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I wrote a quick and easy python script to include in my bash script   For example  your ini file is called food ini and in the file you can have some sections and some lines    FRUIT  Oranges   14 Apples   6   Copy this small 6 line Python script and save it as configparser py     usr bin python import configparser import sys config   configparser ConfigParser   config read sys argv 1   print config get sys argv 2  sys argv 3     Now  in your bash script you could do this for example   OrangeQty   python configparser py food ini FRUIT Oranges    or  ApplesQty   python configparser py food ini FRUIT Apples  echo  ApplesQty   This presupposes     you have Python installed  you have the configparser library installed  this should come with a std python installation    Hope it helps

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This thread does not have enough solutions to choose from  thus here my solution  it does not require tools like sed or awk   grep     section    -A 999 config ini   tail -n  2    grep -B 999         head -n -1   grep   key    cut -d     -f 2   If your are to expect sections with more than 999 lines  feel free to adapt the example above  Note that you may want to trim the resulting value  to remove spaces or a comment string after the value  Remove the   if you need to match keys that do not start at the beginning of the line  as in the example of the question  Better  match explicitly for white spaces and tabs  in such a case  If you have multiple values in a given section you want to read  but want to avoid reading the file multiple times  CONFIG SECTION   grep     section    -A 999 config ini   tail -n  2    grep -B 999         head -n -1   KEY1   echo   CONFIG SECTION    tr       n    grep key1   cut -d     -f 2  echo  quot KEY1   KEY1  quot  KEY2   echo   CONFIG SECTION    tr       n    grep key2   cut -d     -f 2  echo  quot KEY2   KEY2  quot

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Here is my version  which parses sections and populates a global associative array g iniProperties with it  Note that this works only with bash v4 2 and higher   function parseIniFile      accepts the name of the file to parse as argument   1       declare syntax below  -gA  only works with bash 4 2 and higher     unset g iniProperties     declare -gA g iniProperties     currentSection        while read -r line     do         if     line            then             if     line           then                  currentSection   echo  line   sed -e  s  r  g    tr -d                     fi         else             if     line             then                 cleanLine   echo  line   sed -e  s  r  g                   key  currentSection   echo  cleanLine   awk -F     st   index  0      print  substr  0 0 st-1                     value   echo  cleanLine   awk -F     st   index  0      print  substr  0 st 1                     g iniProperties  key   value             fi         fi      done  lt   1     And here is a sample code using the function above   parseIniFile   path to myFile ini  for key in     g iniProperties       do     echo  Found key value  key     g iniProperties  key    done

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Display the value of my key in an ini-style my file   sed -n -e  s   s my key s   s   p  my file    -n -- do not print anything by default -e -- execute the expression s PATTERN  p -- display anything following this pattern In the pattern    -- pattern begins at the beginning of the line  s -- whitespace character   -- zero or many  whitespace characters    Example     cat my file   Example INI file something     foo my key        bar not my key    baz my key 2      bing    sed -n -e  s   s my key s   s   p  my file bar   So      Find a pattern where the line begins with zero or many whitespace characters    followed by the string my key  followed by zero or many whitespace characters  an equal sign  then zero or many whitespace characters again  Display the rest of the content on that line following that pattern

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I have nice one-liner  assuimng you have php and jq installed   cat file ini   php -r  quot echo json encode parse ini string file get contents  php   stdin    true  INI SCANNER RAW    quot    jq   section key

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one of more possible solutions  dbver   sed -n  s   database version                  1 p   lt  parameters ini  echo  dbver

User · Answer

You can use bash native parser to interpret ini values  by    source  lt  grep   file ini   Sample file   section-a    var1 value1   var2 value2   IPS    quot 1 2 3 4 quot   quot 1 2 3 5 quot     To access variables  you simply printing them  echo  var1  You may also use arrays as shown above  echo   IPS       If you only want a single value just grep for it  source  lt  grep var1 file ini   For the demo  check this recording at asciinema  It is simple as you don t need for any external library to parse the data  but it comes with some disadvantages  For example   If you have spaces between    variable name and value   then you ve to trim the spaces first  e g      source  lt  grep   file ini   sed  s         g    Or if you don t care about the spaces  including in the middle   use      source  lt  grep   file ini   tr -d        To support   comments  replace them with        sed  quot s     g quot  foo ini   source  dev stdin   The sections aren t supported  e g  if you ve  section-name   then you ve to filter it out as shown above  e g  grep     the same for other unexpected errors  If you need to read specific value under specific section  use grep -A  sed  awk or ex   E g    source  lt  grep    lt  grep -A5    section-b    file ini    Note  Where -A5 is the number of rows to read in the section  Replace source with cat to debug   If you ve got any parsing errors  ignore them by adding  2 gt  dev null   See also   How to parse and convert ini file into bash array variables  at serverfault SE Are there any tools for modifying INI style files from shell script

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For people  like me  looking to read INI files from shell scripts  read shell  not bash  - I ve knocked up the a little helper library which tries to do exactly that    https   github com wallyhall shini  MIT license  do with it as you please   I ve linked above including it inline as the code is quite lengthy    It s somewhat more  complicated  than the simple sed lines suggested above - but works on a very similar basis   Function reads in a file line-by-line - looking for section markers   section   and key value declarations  key value    Ultimately you get a callback to your own function - section  key and value

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Yet another implementation using awk with a little more flexibility  function parse ini       cat  dev stdin   awk -v section  quot  1 quot  -v key  quot  2 quot        BEGIN         if  length key   gt  0    params 2         else if  length section   gt  0    params 1         else   params 0             match  0        next       match  0                      current substr  0  RSTART 1  RLENGTH-2        found current  section       if  params  0    print current             match  0                       if  found             if  params  2  amp  amp  key   1    print  3            if  params  1    printf  quot  s  s n quot   1  3                      You can use calling passing between 0 and 2 params  cat myfile1 ini myfile2 ini   parse ini   List section names  cat myfile1 ini myfile2 ini   parse ini  my-section    Prints keys and values from a section  cat myfile1 ini myfile2 ini   parse ini  my-section   my-key    Print a single value

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All of the solutions I ve seen so far also hit on commented out lines  This one didn t  if the comment code is     awk -F       if      0          amp  amp   0    database version   print  2   file ini

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If using sections  this will do the job    Example raw output        settings  section  SETTING ONE this is setting one SETTING TWO This is the second setting ANOTHER SETTING This is another setting   Regexp parsing        settings   sed -n -E            s           1  h n      a-zA-Z   s       G s                  n      3  1   2   p    section SETTING ONE  this is setting one  section SETTING TWO  This is the second setting  section ANOTHER SETTING  This is another setting    Now all together      eval      settings   sed -n -E            s           1  h n      a-zA-Z   s       G s                  n      3  1   2   p        echo  section SETTING TWO This is the second setting

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This implementation uses awk and has the following advantages    Will only return the first matching entry Ignores lines that start with a   Trims leading and trailing whitespace  but not internal whitespace   Formatted version   awk -F         s database version s                  sub             2               sub             2               print  2              exit               parameters ini   One-liner   awk -F         s database version s      sub             2   sub             2   print  2  exit     parameters ini

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Just finished writing my own parser  I tried to use various parser found here  none seems to work with both ksh93  AIX  and bash  Linux    It s old programming style - parsing line by line  Pretty fast since it used few external commands  A bit slower because of all the eval required for dynamic name of the array   The ini support 3 special syntaxs    includefile ini file --  Load an additionnal ini file  Useful for splitting ini in multiple files  or re-use some piece of configuration includedir directory --  Same as includefile  but include a complete directory includesection section --  Copy an existing section to the current section    I used all thoses syntax to have pretty complex  re-usable ini file  Useful to install products when installing a new OS - we do that a lot   Values can be accessed with   ini  section  item    The array MUST be defined before calling this   Have fun  Hope it s useful for someone else   function Show Debug           DEBUG   YES     amp  amp  echo  DEBUG            function Fatal       echo      Script aborted      exit 2        -------------------------------------------------------------------------------   This function load an ini file in the array  ini    The  ini  array must be defined in the calling program  typeset -A ini      It could be any array name  the default array name is  ini       There is heavy usage of  eval  since ksh and bash do not support   reference variable  The name of the ini is passed as variable  and must   be  eval  at run-time to work  Very specific syntax was used and must be   understood before making any modifications      It complexify greatly the program  but add flexibility   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------  function Load Ini       Show Debug   0          typeset ini file   1    Name of the array to fill  By default  it s  ini      typeset ini array name    2 -ini       typeset section variable value line my section file subsection value array include directory all index index sections pre parse     typeset LF         if      -s  ini file     then         Fatal  The ini file is empty or absent in  0   ini file       fi      include directory   dirname  ini file      include directory   include directory -  pwd        Show Debug  include directory  include directory       section      Since this code support both bash and ksh93  you cannot use   the syntax  echo xyz while read line   bash doesn t work like   that    It forces the use of   lt  lt  lt    introduced in bash and ksh93       Show Debug  Reading file  ini file and putting the results in array  ini array name      pre parse    sed  s      g s      g s      g   lt  ini file   egrep -v            while read line  do         if      line 0 1            then   Is the line starting with        Replace  section name  to section name by removing the first and last character             section    line 1               section    section                  eval  sections     ini array name sections list                sections   sections  sections     section              eval   ini array name sections list     sections                Show Debug   ini array name sections list     sections                eval   ini array name  section exist  YES              Show Debug   ini array name  section exist   YES           else             variable   line          content before the               value   line             content after the                if     variable   includefile     then   Include a single file                 Load Ini   include directory  value    ini array name                  continue             elif     variable   includedir     then   Include a directory   If the value doesn t start with a    add the calculated include directory                 if     value           then                     value   include directory  value                  fi   go thru each file                 for file in   ls  value   ini 2 gt  dev null   do                     if     file      ini     then continue  fi   Load a single file                     Load Ini   file    ini array name                  done                 continue             elif     variable   includesection     then   Copy an existing section into the current section                 eval  all index        ini array name          It s not necessarily fast  Need to go thru all the array                 for index in  all index  do   Only if it is the requested section                     if     index    value       then   Evaluate the subsection  section subsection  -- gt  subsection                         subsection   index       Get the current value  source section                          eval  value array       ini array name  index        Assign the value to the current section   The  value array must be resolved on the second pass of the eval  so make sure the   first pass doesn t resolve it    value array instead of  value array     It must be evaluated on the second pass in case there is special character like  1    or   or   in it  code                           eval   ini array name  section  subsection      value array                            Show Debug   ini array name  section  subsection     value array                        fi                 done             fi    Add the value to the array             eval  current value       ini array name  section  variable        If there s already something for this field  add it with the current   content separated by a LF  line feed              new value   current value  current value   LF  value    Assign the content   The  new value must be resolved on the second pass of the eval  so make sure the   first pass doesn t resolve it    new value instead of  new value     It must be evaluated on the second pass in case there is special character like  1    or   or   in it  code               eval   ini array name  section  variable      new value                Show Debug   ini array name  section  variable     new value            fi     done   lt  lt  lt    pre parse      Show Debug  exit  0     n

User · Answer

You may use crudini tool to get ini values  e g    DATABASE VERSION   crudini --get parameters ini    database version

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My version of the one-liner     bin bash  Reader for MS Windows 3 1 Ini-files  Usage  inireader sh    e g   inireader sh win ini ERRORS DISABLE   would return value  no  from the section of win ini   ERRORS   DISABLE no INIFILE  1 SECTION  2 ITEM  3 cat  INIFILE   sed -n      SECTION             p   grep     space    ITEM  space        sed s      space

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Bash does not provide a parser for these files  Obviously you can use an awk command or a couple of sed calls  but if you are bash-priest and don t want to use any other shell  then you can try the following obscure code      usr bin env bash cfg parser          ini     lt  1                    read the file     ini    ini                    escape       ini    ini                    escape       IFS    n   amp  amp  ini     ini      convert to line-array     ini     ini                   remove comments with       ini     ini                   remove tabs before       ini     ini                   remove tabs after       ini     ini                   remove anything with a space around       ini     ini              n cfg section       set section prefix     ini     ini                     convert text2function  1      ini     ini                   convert item to array     ini     ini                   close array parenthesis     ini     ini                    the multiline trick     ini     ini                        convert text2function  2      ini     ini                   remove extra parenthesis     ini 0       remove first element     ini    ini       1           add the last brace     eval    echo    ini          eval the result    cfg writer          IFS       n      fun    declare -F       fun    fun  declare -f        for f in  fun  do              f cfg section         f      amp  amp  continue         item    declare -f   f            item    item                item    item              item    item                 vars    item                eval  f         echo     f cfg section             for var in  vars  do             echo  var      var            done     done     Usage     parse the config file called  myfile ini   with the following   contents        sec2      var2  something  cfg parser  myfile ini     enable section called  sec2   in the file  sec2   for reading cfg section sec2    read the content of the variable called  var2   in the file   var2 XXX   If your var2 is an array  then you can use     var index   echo   var2    Bash ini-parser can be found at The Old School DevOps blog site

User · Answer

Similar to the other Python answers  you can do this using the -c flag to execute a sequence of Python statements given on the command line     python3 -c  import configparser  c   configparser ConfigParser    c read  parameters ini    print c  parameters ini    database version     20110611142248   This has the advantage of requiring only the Python standard library and the advantage of not writing a separate script file   Or use a here document for better readability  thusly      bin bash python  lt  lt  EOI import configparser c   configparser ConfigParser   c read  params txt   print c  chassis    serialNumber   EOI  serialNumber   python  lt  lt  EOI import configparser c   configparser ConfigParser   c read  params txt   print c  chassis    serialNumber   EOI    echo  serialNumber

User · Answer

Sed one-liner  that takes sections into account  Example file    section1  param1 123 param2 345 param3 678   section2  param1 abc param2 def param3 ghi   section3  param1 000 param2 111 param3 222   Say you want param2 from section2  Run the following   sed -nr      section2       l   param2         s            p  q    n  b l      file ini   will give you  def

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The explanation to the answer for the one-liner sed   section1  param1 123 param2 345 param3 678   section2  param1 abc param2 def param3 ghi   section3  param1 000 param2 111 param3 222  sed -nr  quot     section2       l    s         p  n        q  b l    quot    file ini  To understand  it will be easier to format the line like this  sed -nr  quot          start processing when we found the word   quot section2  quot            section2        the set of commands inside     will be executed            create a label   quot l  quot    https   www grymoire com Unix Sed html uh-58             l    s         p               move on to the next line  For the first run it is the   quot param1 abc  quot            n               check if this line is beginning of new section  If yes - then exit                  q            otherwise jump to the label   quot l  quot            b l               quot  file ini

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This uses the system perl and clean regular expressions    cat parameters ini   perl -0777ne  print   1  if     s parameters  ini s     s S    sdatabase version s   s

[bash] How do I grab an INI value within a shell script?

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