LWed - Windows INI file editor. Version 2.2.3 of 1996-09-01, Copyright 1996 (C) Laszlo Radanyi TABLE OF CONTENTS____________________________________________________________ 1. LICENSE AGREEMENT 2. INTRODUCTION 3. USER'S MANUAL 3.1 Basic functions 3.2 Advanced functions 3.3 The built-in help 4. ABOUT THE AUTHOR 1. LICENSE ISSUES____________________________________________________________ This version of LWED is distributed as SHAREWARE. You may use the program unlimitedly for 21 days at which time you have to decide to eighter discard the program or register it. You are encouraged to distribute the unregistered version of LWED as long as the package is not modified. The registration fee is 5 USD, which is best sent via snail mail after contacting the author via email. By registering LWED, you gain a single user license to the product and you help the author to make even better products. Registered users also have life-time support for the product via email. All registered users have right to all new versions of lwed as long as the license is valid. Upon registering, the user receives a registered version of the program which has different license conditions. THIS PROGRAM IS DISTRIBUTED IN THE HOPE THAT IT WILL BE USEFUL, BUT WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; WITHOUT EVEN THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE USER SHOULD BE AWARE OF THE RISKS OF MANIPULATING THE WINDOWS INITIALIZATION FILES. CARELESS CHANGES TO SOME INI FILES MAY RENDER THE SYSTEM UNUSABLE. THE AUTHOR OF LWED ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LOSS OF FUNCTIONALITY OR LOSS OF DATA AS RESULT OF THE USE OF THIS PRODUCT. Windows is the registrated trademark of Microsoft Corporation. 4DOS is owned by JP software Inc. 1. INTRODUCTION______________________________________________________________ Lwed is a utility for manipulating Windows(TM) INI files from DOS. Its history is simple; its function may be simple too, but over the years, LWED has grown to be able to do most of what a power user should want from a program of this kind. The program is started with a flag for the desired operation and parameters for this operation. Each action has a more or less verbose name, which may make them easier to remember. Most of the functions have a shorter, one character name too. There is a built-in help system, which is kept simple; the most used functions are shown on one side and the more advanced operations are described on a second page while a few functions that do not manipulate INI files are described on a third page. Clearly, there are so many functions, that it would have impos- sible to squeeze together descriptions for all of them on one page. This is why I made pages, but it was too technocratic to call them page '1' through '3'. Rather than writing a command for changing one value at a time in an INI file, LWED can MERGE two INI files. This is done in a somewhat unintelligent way; see the section about '--merge'. You are very welcome with comments about this program; I am particulary interested in comments about how the program fits different needs. Although there are a lot of other INI file manipulating utilities on the Internet, I sincerely believe that this is THE one you need. 3. USER'S MANUAL_____________________________________________________________ LWED is a DOS command-line mode program, and it is aimed at batch use that is, it needs command-line arguments to complete a function. Switches - or modes - can be forward slashes '/' which is very common under DOS, and you can also use a dash '-'. You need two switch characters for a verbose switch, like '--' or '//'. Any other switches or switch combinations will cause LWED to exit and leave a short message on the standard error stream. The arguments used by the program are referenced between less-than and greater-than signs. The names used are as follows: The target INI file name. If this file is in the same directory as LWED, only the file name is necessary, otherwise the full path needs to be given.
The target section, that is, the INI value starting after a string enclosed in brackets as in [section] and until the next such section name is encountered. The string before the first equal sign on one line in the given section. The string after the first equal sign on one line in the given section. The name of the environment variable to use for the '-e' function. 3.1 Basic functions__________________________________________________________ The basic functions are the most used or oldest functions; they are probably what you would expect from a program like this. -h or --help This launches the built-in help system. Read more about it in section 3.3. -v or --version Prints version information along with registration data to the standard output stream. The version information is necessary when communicating with the author. This can also help you to see if there is a newer version distributed. Newer versions are generally better since the reported bugs are always corrected before new functionality is added. -r or --read Prints of to the standard output stream. -w or --write Changes an existing as specified; if the key doesn't exist, a new key is created. -a or --append Appends to the current value of . If the key doesn't exist, a new key is created. -i or --insert or --prepend Inserts immediately after the equal sign '=' of . If the key doesn't exist, a new key is created. -d or --delete Removes from
. -m or --merge Writes the contents of into just as you would write value for value. Please pay attention to that MERGE does NOT handle SYSTEM.INI/[386Enh] very well, since it uses standard INI write operations; that is, for each [section], for each key in the source file, it writes [Section]/key=value into the target file. This means that the first device= statement could be over written several times ! -e or --read_to_environment Reads into in the master environment. If the variable is not set, a new is written. WARNING: This function relies on Int2E. 4DOS users should be particulary careful with this function, see the 4DOS manual for more information. 3.2 Advanced functions_______________________________________________________ -c or --comment Inserts a comment character ';' before the entry. -q or --write_quoted Writes inside of double quotes. For example : LWED -q TEST.INI section key quotedValue results in the following entry written into the file TEST.INI in the same directory as LWED.EXE: [section] key="quoted value" --write_blind Writes = as first entry in
without search for an already existing value. --write_pair Searches for = under
and creates the key if it doesn't exist. This is essentially the same function as write, but this one also looks for the supplied value. ** NOTE ** The pair functions all are primarily intended to deal with the [386Enh] section in SYSTEM.INI, since this section contains a lot of keys named 'device' but different values. --comment_pair Searches for = under
and places a comment character before the key. This is the same function as 'write_comment' but it also looks for the value. --delete_pair Searches for = under
and removes the entry. --delete_section Removes
from the INI file named . --read_section Prints the entire contents of
to the standard output stream. 3.3 The built-in help________________________________________________________ The built-in help is invoked by issuing the command 'LWED' alone on the command line or by giving eighter of the '?' 'h' options. Help consists of two pages, BASIC and ADVANCED. Both pages are just written to the standard output. LWED waits for a keystroke on both screens; you can go to eighter page by pressing '1' (ONE) or '2'. You exit help by pressing any other key than '1' or '2'. 4. ABOUT THE AUTHOR__________________________________________________________ Laszlo Radanyi is working as C/C++ programmer at Interactive Design in Sweden. He can be reached at 'lrd@plea.se' or 'Laszlo.Radanyi@Interactive.Se'.