3 ms·

INI does not perform any computations, it is a file format without any execution model defined. What you describe is a possible execution model by an INI parse

• baq 6y ago
  this point is dangerous - the same logic can be applied to C code or any other programming language. source files only encode the AST, after all. it's the compiler/interpreter doing the actual work. it just so happens that the INI interpreter doesn't usually do much else than load the list of key value maps - and that's the problem - people extend INI source files in a different language which can do more.
  • goto11 6y ago
    No, a programming language like C have both a syntax and an execution model. In Turing-machine terminology, it has a set of symbols and rules for processing the symbols. This is why you can reason about things like the halting-problem. If you only have a set of symbols but no rules for processing the symbols, you don't have a machine, and you cant meaningfully talk about "termination". INI does not have a defined execution model, so it is not a machine the way C is. A particular implementation could read the data into key-value maps but it is not required to. E.g. it could just search through the file for a specific key. Or it could do nothing.