ProfileString

PowerScript function

Description

Obtains the string value of a setting in the profile file for your
application.

Syntax

1	ProfileString ( filename, section, key, default )

Argument	Description
filename	A string whose value is the name of the profile file. If you do not specify a full path, ProfileString uses the operating system’s standard file search order to find the file.
section	A string whose value is the name of a group of related values in the profile file. In the file, section names are in square brackets. Do not include the brackets in section. Section is not case sensitive.
key	A string specifying the setting name in section whose value you want. The setting name is followed by an equal sign in the file. Do not include the equal sign in key. Key is not case sensitive.
default	A string value that ProfileString will return if filename is not found, if section or key does not exist in filename, or if the value of key cannot be converted to an integer.

Return value

String, with a maximum length of 4096 characters. Returns the string
from key within section within filename. If filename is not found,
section is not found in filename, or key is not found in section,
ProfileString returns default. If an error occurs, it returns the empty
string (“”). If any argument’s value is null, ProfileString returns
null.

Usage

Use ProfileInt or ProfileString to get configuration settings from a
profile file that you have designed for your application.

You can use SetProfileString to change values in the profile file to
customize your application’s configuration at runtime. Before you make
changes, you can use ProfileInt and ProfileString to obtain the original
settings so you can restore them when the user exits the
application.

ProfileInt, ProfileString, and SetProfileString can read or write to
files with ANSI or UTF16-LE encoding on Windows systems, and ANSI or
UTF16-BE encoding on UNIX systems.

Windows registry

ProfileString can also be used to obtain configuration settings
from the Windows system registry. For information on how to use the
system registry, see the discussion of initialization files and the
Windows registry in Managing Initialization Files and the Windows Registry in Application Techniques.

Examples

These examples use a file called PROFILE.INI, which contains the
following lines. Quotes around string values in the INI file are
optional:

[Employee]

Name=Smith

[Dept]

Name=Marketing

This statement returns the string contained in keyword Name in
section Employee in file C:PROFILE.INI and returns None if there is an
error. In the example, the return value is Smith:

1 2	ProfileString("C:PROFILE.INI", "Employee", & "Name", "None")

The following statements open w_marketing if the string in the
keyword Name in section Department of file C:PROFILE.INI is
Marketing:

IF ProfileString("C:PROFILE.INI", "Department", &

"Name", "None") = "Marketing" THEN

Open(w_marketing)

END IF

See also

ProfileInt

SetProfileString

ProfileString method for DataWindows in the section called “ProfileString” in DataWindow Reference.

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August 20, 2023

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