benhoyt/inih

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

3045 stars · 578 forks observed · 2026-10-08

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

inih (INI Not Invented Here) is a small, simple .INI file parser written in C, designed to be just a couple pages of code. It parses INI files in a SAX-style callback manner, making it well-suited for low-memory embedded systems and compatible with Python's ConfigParser style.

Use cases

• parse INI config files in a C program
• read configuration files on an embedded microcontroller
• parse INI files compatible with Python ConfigParser
• parse INI data from a string or custom stream
• handle multi-line and inline-comment INI syntax in C
• add lightweight config file support to a C library

When to choose

• you need a tiny, dependency-free INI parser in C or C++
• you're targeting embedded or low-memory systems
• you want ConfigParser-style INI syntax with compile-time configurability
• you prefer a simple callback-based (SAX-style) parsing API

When to avoid

• you need a full-featured configuration format like TOML or YAML
• you want a tree/DOM-style parsed config object rather than callbacks
• you need type conversion, validation, or schema support built in
• you're working in a higher-level language with native config parsing

Facets

library · maturity stable

parser configuration-management developer-tools parsers embedded-systems developer-tools files c cpp embedded cross-platform ini-parser configparser embedded-friendly single-file-library sax-style linux

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