Some INI files exist in the world where initial few variables have no [section]. This lib's read.ini currently would end up with error object 'lastSection' not found for those.

Simply adding lastSection <- "DEFAULT" atop of read func would solve that. I think mostly this approach would be ok to write.ini creating such section when asked but it would be cleaner if that section is written first without bracketed header.

Making both changes would help to work with basic key=value files without any sections too.

Many libs use "DEFAULT" for reading but writing implementation varies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file

Report from below comes from e-mail. Writing here to document!

Create a new temp ini for reading

library(ini)
iniFile <- tempfile(fileext = '.ini')
sink(iniFile)
cat("; This line is a comment\n")
cat("# This one too!\n")
cat("[Hello World]\n")
cat("Foo1 = Bar=345 \n")
cat("Foo2 = Bar=345 \n")
cat("Foo3 = Bar\=345 \n")
sink()

Read ini

checkini <- read.ini(iniFile)

Check structure

checkini
checkini$Hello World$Foo1

#> Error: '=' is an unrecognized escape in character string starting ""Foo2 = Bar="

When we call write.ini it adds space to the between key and value ,as a result if the ini file is parsed using INIParser in Java it would give error . if we add a space option like below it can be avoided

`write.ini <- function(x, filepath,spaceOption, encoding = getOption("encoding")) {

  con <- file(filepath, open = 'w', encoding = encoding)
  on.exit(close(con))

  for(section in names(x) ) {
    writeLines( paste0('[', section, ']'), con)
    for (key in x[ section ]) {
      if(spaceOption) {
        writeLines( paste0(names(key), ' = ', key), con)
      }else{
        writeLines( paste0(names(key), '=', key), con)
      }
     
    }
    writeLines("", con)
  }

}`

Hello,

Thanks for this nice and straightforward package!

I'm wanting to parse an INI file generated by another tool and store any modifications afterwards. These files do not contain any sections, which read.ini (and I guess write.ini) don't really like.

The error in question is

Error in ini::read.ini("...") : 
  object 'lastSection' not found

Perhaps lastSection could be initialized with a default dummy value?

(I guess for now a workaround would be to manually inject a dummy section prior to parsing the file and do the writing with another function.)

Regards,
Rick