I'm late to join the party, but I had the same issue today and I've written the following implementation:
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
static bool match(this string str, string pat, out Match m) =>
(m = Regex.Match(str, pat, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)).Success;
static void Main()
{
Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>> ini = new Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>>();
string section = "";
foreach (string line in File.ReadAllLines(.........)) // read from file
{
string ln = (line.Contains('#') ? line.Remove(line.IndexOf('#')) : line).Trim();
if (ln.match(@"^[ \t]*\[(?<sec>[\w\-]+)\]", out Match m))
section = m.Groups["sec"].ToString();
else if (ln.match(@"^[ \t]*(?<prop>[\w\-]+)\=(?<val>.*)", out m))
{
if (!ini.ContainsKey(section))
ini[section] = new Dictionary<string, string>();
ini[section][m.Groups["prop"].ToString()] = m.Groups["val"].ToString();
}
}
// access the ini file as follows:
string content = ini["section"]["property"];
}
It must be noted, that this implementation does not handle sections or properties which are not found.
To achieve this, you should extend the Dictionary<,>-class to handle unfound keys.
To serialize an instance of Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>> to an .ini-file, I use the following code:
string targetpath = .........;
Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>> ini = ........;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (string section in ini.Keys)
{
sb.AppendLine($"[{section}]");
foreach (string property in ini[section].Keys)
sb.AppendLine($"{property}={ini[section][property]");
}
File.WriteAllText(targetpath, sb.ToString());