Parsing: Ini Key Assignment Delimiter Position Tool

Description

Locate the first explicitly allowed equals/colon delimiter in one restricted unquoted INI key line; no sections, escaped delimiters, comments or continuation syntax.

INI-style configuration formats share section, assignment, and comment conventions but differ across implementations. Delimiters and whitespace policies need to be explicit, especially inside quoted or escaped values. A local split or prefix check should be interpreted under its stated dialect.

Locate the first explicitly allowed equals/colon delimiter in one restricted unquoted INI key line; no sections, escaped delimiters, comments or continuation syntax.

When to use this tool

Use Parsing: Ini Key Assignment Delimiter Position when you need this specific INI-style assignment, section, or comment check under an explicit policy.

How to use the tool and how it works

Enter line, allowedDelimiters. Use the units and conventions below.
Run the tool. Correct any format, range, or cross-field input error before interpreting the output.
Read result. Expand result to inspect the returned fields.

Require allowedDelimiters to contain only one or more = or : characters and a line without CR/LF or a leading comment/section marker. Find the first permitted delimiter at a UTF-16 offset, trim the preceding key, and preserve rawValue after it. If absent, return offset=-1, delimiter="", trimmed whole-line key, and rawValue="" inside result.^[1]

Input field	Meaning and units	Accepted input
line	One supplied line under the stated newline policy.	Required. Text. Implementation limit: 8192 Unicode code points and 16384 UTF-16 code units.
allowedDelimiters	Allowed Delimiters	Required. Text. Implementation limit: 8192 Unicode code points and 16384 UTF-16 code units.

Output field	Interpretation	Returned shape
result	Object containing the calculated result members described below.	Required. Object.
result.delimiterOffset	Zero-based UTF-16 offset, or -1 for no delimiter.	Calculated result member: number.
result.delimiter	Delimiter	Calculated result member: string.
result.key	Key	Calculated result member: string.
result.rawValue	Untrimmed text after the first delimiter, or empty if absent.	Calculated result member: string.

json

{
  "input": {
    "line": " key : a=b",
    "allowedDelimiters": "=:"
  },
  "output": {
    "result": {
      "delimiterOffset": 5,
      "delimiter": ":",
      "key": "key",
      "rawValue": " a=b"
    }
  }
}

Limitations and assumptions

Empty keys and delimiter-free lines can succeed. No quote/escape awareness, inline comment stripping, key validation, interpolation, or full INI dialect is implemented.
Outputs are nested inside result. Inputs must satisfy both the field types and the cross-field conditions above. Invalid input causes an error; a successful false flag or documented placeholder is a different result.

Alternative or Complementary methods

Choose the target application's INI dialect for a complete configuration parser. Verify quoting, comments, interpolation, duplicate keys, and section state beyond one local split.

References

Calculation and input contract: parse/ini-key-assignment-delimiter-position — tool.io

Similar or alternative tools

Parsing: Dotenv Single Assignment Split
Split a restricted dotenv assignment at its first equals sign, retaining raw value and optional export prefix without evaluating quoting, interpolation or comments.
Ini Comment Leading Space Policy
Apply an explicitly supplied leading-horizontal-whitespace policy for full-line INI comments.