Modification to Write Configuration .ini file

Question

I have found one of the annoying things about Labview's configuration file VI's is that when the configuration file is written, all spacing between sections is eliminated making it hard to read, even if the spacing was there to begin with when the file was read.  For example, I would like the file to look like
[Header1]
key1=value1
key2=value2
[Header2]
key3=value3
key4=value4
But it comes out looking like:
[Header1]
key1=value1
key2=value2
[Header2]
key3=value3
key4=value4
making it harder to read.
I made a modification to the file Config Data to String.vi which is located \vi.lib\UTILITY\config.llb\
Make a backup copy of \vi.lib\UTILITY\config.llb\Config Data to String.vi and replace the file in the config.llb with the attachment (saved as LV 8.0).
What I did was any time a section header is to be written to the file, I preceded it with another CRLF character so that it creates a blank line just before the section header.  To keep from having an extra blank line at the beginning of the .ini file, it does not create the CRLF there.
I hope others will find this modification useful.
Attachments:
Config Data to String.vi ‏26 KB

Answer 1

tst wrote:
The idea itself is great, but I don't like the idea of changing vi.lib files (for several reasons).
I didn't look at your code, but I assume that at least in this case, the resulting files will still be processed fine by machines which don't have this modification, so it's probably not as bad, but I still don't like it.
You should probably go to the Product Suggestion Center and tell NI about this idea.
I agree about not trying to change the vi.lib files.  It gets into modifying code that is rather deeply embedded about 3 or 4 sub-vi's down.  By my testing, machines without the modification do handle the files just fine.  The alternative would be to create a backup copy of the whole library and rename the files and use my own versions instead. I've recently installed the OpenG files and looked into them.  I like the functionality they provide to be able to store and retrieve clusters of configuration data.  Of course they have NI's write configuration files at the heart as well, so if they link to the original VI library then they will generate the same .ini files missing the extra lines that I like.
tst wrote:
You should probably go to the Product Suggestion Center and tell NI about this idea.
Thanks, I already did this some time ago when I created a test VI to just read and close an .ini file.  I found that without setting the "write configuration file" flag in the close config file VI (which defaults to True), the whole file got rewritten even though nothing had changed.  That's how I stumbled across this loss of blank lines thing.
I hope NI will look into that suggestion and add it to the config file VI library in the future.  It would probably need to be implemented with a flag that says "Add blank lines?" that would default to False so that the original behavior of the VI could be maintained.  Since the VI that controls the appearance of the file is a few layers deeper than Close config file VI, that flag would have to be passed through a couple of sub-VI's.
Thanks for your feedback.
Message Edited by Ravens Fan on 09-22-2007 03:22 PM