How are quoted values handled?

INI is loosely standardized, but this tool strips surrounding quotes and keeps the inner string — `name = "yutils"` becomes `"yutils"`.

Are comments preserved?

Lines starting with `#` or `;` are treated as comments and dropped. They do not appear in the JSON output.

INI itself has no nesting; some tools expand dotted keys like `[a.b]` into `{"a": {"b": ...}}`. This tool supports only flat (single-level) sections.

Example

[database]
host = localhost
port = 5432

[user]
name = yutils
admin = true

{
  "database": {
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": "5432"
  },
  "user": {
    "name": "yutils",
    "admin": "true"
  }
}

`[section]` headers plus `key = value` lines. Values stay as strings — INI has no type system in the spec.

Usage / FAQ

Q.How are quoted values handled?: A.INI is loosely standardized, but this tool strips surrounding quotes and keeps the inner string — `name = "yutils"` becomes `"yutils"`.
Q.Are comments preserved?: A.Lines starting with `#` or `;` are treated as comments and dropped. They do not appear in the JSON output.
Q.What about nested sections?: A.INI itself has no nesting; some tools expand dotted keys like `[a.b]` into `{"a": {"b": ...}}`. This tool supports only flat (single-level) sections.

Fun facts

INI files became the de facto standard when Windows 3.0 (1990) used them for system configuration (`win.ini`, `system.ini`, `boot.ini`). 'INI' stands for 'initialization' — Microsoft didn't invent it, they just elevated a DOS-era informal convention to the OS level.
Wikipedia — INI file
INI has no formal spec — unlike JSON's RFC 8259 or YAML's 1.2 spec, every parser builds a slightly different dialect. Comments (`;` vs `#`), key quoting, and value-escape rules all vary by library.
Wikipedia — INI format
Windows 95 started replacing INI with the Registry (though `GetPrivateProfileString` was never deprecated). And yet — PHP's `php.ini`, Git's `.gitconfig` (INI-flavored), and Python's `setup.cfg` are all alive and well. INI is the format that refuses to die.
MSDN — Profile API