Shameless plug, you can use bash to parse a .INI configuration file. It leverages a one-liner awk: ini_buffer="$(print "%s" "$raw_buffer" | awk '/^\[.*\]$

Shameless plug, you can use bash to parse a .INI configuration file. It leverages a one-liner awk: ini_buffer="$(print "%s" "$raw_buffer" | awk '/^\[.*\]$/{obj=$0}/=/{print obj $0}')" Supporting bash APIs using that one-liner awk: https://github.com/egberts/bash-ini-file https://github.com/egberts/bash-ini-file