General Config Formats.

Configuration files appear in two different flavors, although they share a common statement format. Configuration files with individual parameters are considered to be files "without sections". Files that have an entity with one or more descriptive statements are "with sections".

Configuration files may also contain comments. Depending how you view a file you may or may not be able to edit the comments. Comments begin with a semi-colon in column one.

Without Sections

Config files without sections consist or one or more statements. Each statement defines a property and a value. A property is an entity that means something to a library. For example, "OnlineStartDate" is the property that defines when Online registration opens. Its value would be a date.

Statements have three significnat pieces. A property, the equal sign (=) and a value. Values that contain embedded spaces must be enclosed within double spaces.

property = value

OnlineStartDate = 20020101

Season = "May through June"

With Sections

Some configuration files contain entities that may have multiple characteristics. For example, a field in a form may be required, is a number and should be labeled as "Age". In this example, the entity is the "Age" field and its characteristics are whether it is required, its type and its label.

Entities with characteristics are called sections. Their characrteristics are statements as described above.

[Age]
Required = "Yes"
Type = "Number(5,20)"
Label = "Age as of 1/1/2002"

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