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:
Hope it helps :¬)