How can I access INI files from Perl?

Question

What is the best way to parse INI file in Perl and convert it to hash?

Answer 1

reading and write function for ini file edit:

sub iniRead
 { 
  my $ini = $_[0];
  my $conf;
  open (INI, "$ini") || die "Can't open $ini: $!\n";
    while () {
        chomp;
        if (/^\s*\[\s*(.+?)\s*\]\s*$/) {
            $section = $1;
        }

        if ( /^\s*([^=]+?)\s*=\s*(.*?)\s*$/ ) {
          $conf->{$section}->{$1} = $2;         
        }
    }
  close (INI);
  return $conf;
}
sub iniWrite
{
  my $ini = $_[0];
  my $conf = $_[1];
  my $contents = '';
foreach my $section ( sort { (($b eq '_') <=> ($a eq '_')) || ($a cmp $b) } keys %$conf ) {
    my $block = $conf->{$section};
    $contents .= "\n" if length $contents;
    $contents .= "[$section]\n" unless $section eq '_';
    foreach my $property ( sort keys %$block ) {
      $contents .= "$property=$block->{$property}\n";
    }
  }
  open( CONF,"> $ini" ) or print("not open the file");
  print CONF $contents;
  close CONF;
}

sample usage:

read conf file and saved to hash

$conf = iniRead("/etc/samba/smb.conf");

change the your config attribute or added new config attributes

edit

$conf->{"global"}->{"workgroup"} = "WORKGROUP";

added new config

$conf->{"www"}->{"path"}="/var/www/html";

saved your new configuration to file

iniWrite("/etc/samba/smb.conf",$conf);