INI ↔ JSON Converter

Converts in both directions. Reading INI, it walks the file section by section, turns a dotted section name like [db.primary] into nested objects, keeps quoted strings exactly as written, and infers true, false, null, integers and floats from unquoted values. Indented continuation lines are folded into the value above them, the way configparser reads them. Writing INI, it emits the top-level scalars first as an un-sectioned head, then each nested object as its own [section], flattening anything deeper with dotted names.

INI has no specification, which is the root of every surprise in this format. This parser splits on the first = only, so the key: value dialect that Python's configparser also accepts will not be recognised here. Comments introduced by ; or # are read and discarded — they are not carried through to the output, so a round trip through this tool strips the documentation out of a config file. Duplicate keys in the same section resolve last-wins, and a section name that collides with an existing scalar replaces it.

Type inference is convenient and occasionally lossy, so it is worth knowing exactly where. A version written as 1.20 becomes the number 1.2 and loses its trailing zero. A zero-padded value like 007 becomes 7. An integer too large for JavaScript to hold exactly is left as a string rather than silently rounded, which is the one case where the tool refuses to guess. Anything with two dots, a leading +, or a hex 0x prefix stays a string, so 1.2.3 and +82101234567 survive unchanged. If you need a value to stay text, quote it.

JSON has arrays and INI does not, and no amount of convention fixes that. An array value is written out as its JSON form on a single line, which is readable and stable but does not come back as an array — reading that file again yields the string ["a","b"]. Multi-line strings do round-trip, written the way configparser writes them, with the first line after the = and the rest indented. If your data is genuinely a tree with lists in it, INI is the wrong destination and the conversion is telling you so.