[Ulitily] Simplifinf, a basic inf simplifier (v0.30b)

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:49 pm

I'm not going to do a proper release post for this little utility, but let me explain my reasoning behind creating it. Today, I once again found myself going through a driver inf removing (to me) useless commentary, redundant spaces and newlines, and adding some consistency for spaces before and after assignment symbols. As these inf files tend to get rather large I eventually got sick of it and decided to write a program that would do this for me. Hence, Simplifinf.
Simplifinf is a very simple utility that parses an inf file of your choosing and spits out a new file that has commentary removed (along with the corresponding lines if there was nothing else on there), tabs and redundant spaces removed and adds one space before and after any assignment (=) symbols. It leaves anything inside quotes alone and makes sure there's an empty line between each section of the inf.
The only limitation I'm aware of is the fact that it doesn't support unicode infs.. I have no need of this, and don't know how to add the support, so don't expect to see this. Of course the source code is included.
As far as I know the created inf is always correct, however if you notice any inconsistencies or corruptions please point them out to me (and include the section of the original inf that was effected).
The program includes almost no text and, I'm afraid, doesn't take switches. But then, how often would you use it? Just open the executable and type in the filename of the inf file you want to change, including the .inf extension, or drag the file you want to change onto the executable for instant gratification.

Download link: here
MD5: 7430D8AC9D69DEB5532FEEA0E1A43366

Known bugs in v0.30b:
None

Limitations:
No configuration (through switches or otherwise)
Only works on ANSI encoded files

Changelog:
v0.10: initial release
v0.11: now with drag-and-drop support!
v0.11a: fixed drag-and-drop support to work on files in directories that don't have spaces in them (doh)
v0.20: rewritten from scratch to improve code sanity. Also fixes issue of spaces being deleted where they shouldn't be. Since there's been so much interest in this I'm changing the version numbering to allow for the fact that this might be getting a few updates. Earlier numbers have been changed to reflect this.
v0.21: another rewrite later, simplifinf should now be a lot more stable. Nothing about its functionality was changed though.
v0.25: rewritten once more (I'm doing too much of these, yeesh) This release adds multi-pass support and fixes a few bugs, and you can now tell it what it should call the output file (and where it should place it, if you like)
v0.30: added a second pass - now assignment symbols lign up in columns! (This was a lot harder to add than I'd hoped and I hope I might be able to improve the implementation later, but it works)
v0.30a: forgot to add logic for handling tabs in last version
v0.30b: fixed bug where second pass would crash the program. Also completely rewritten for modularity, but since it doesn't change anything for the end-user yet I'm not incrementing the version number.

Enjoy!

runningfool87 · Post by **runningfool87** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:13 pm

will this cause any noticeable speed increase in integration/installation?

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:37 pm

I doubt it. It simply makes inf files more readable, which can be a blessing when you're working with them. For me, this allows me to easily remove all the stuff that I don't need from driver infs (which often include code for lots of other devices). This, in turn, may slightly speed up your installation. But I still doubt it - really, this isn't meant for end-users (most people). If I work on improving it, perhaps it will be of use to more people, but right now it's just a quick fix I wanted to share with people

Mrs Peel · Post by **Mrs Peel** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:48 pm

And very handy it is too!

The inf templates I use for my pack making are commented to hell (by me LOL) so I know WTF I am doing and to force me to construct everything in a logical sequence. But manually having to delete all my comments when I am finished (for nice clean final code) is effing tiresome.

So you just saved me one more headache in this process and the only thing I could imagine wanting to "improve" would be the ability to drag/drop my target inf file over your exe so I could make this as a "SendTo" addon.

Thanks so much for sharing!

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:53 pm

Drag'n'drop functionality.. hmm, I'd probably have to use windows functions to make that work, unless dropping a file onto it is like adding the file as a switch, which should be reasonably easy to add with code65536's tools as examples

And uh, glad you find it useful!

Mrs Peel · Post by **Mrs Peel** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 9:16 pm

Useful? To a person who value's her time as passionately as I do???? LOL

Anything that saves me 60 seconds of manually removing comments code (with the accompanying risk that I'll be asleep at the wheel and accidentally delete a line of code that I really needed) and saves me 20-50 extra mouse/keyboard operations at the same time is a bleeding GODSEND!

Looking forward to seeing if the drop file thing will be possible. n7Epsilon reg2inf has this capability, so maybe you can take a peeksee at the source files he includes in his releases for some clues for how you might implement this?

Thanks again my dear INF Magician

runningfool87 · Post by **runningfool87** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 9:52 pm

Mitsuko Aninikkou wrote:Drag'n'drop functionality.. hmm, I'd probably have to use windows functions to make that work, unless dropping a file onto it is like adding the file as a switch, which should be reasonably easy to add with code65536's tools as examples And uh, glad you find it useful!

talk to n7epsilon...im pretty sure his reg2inf tool has drag and drop functionality (drop a reg entry over the exe and it automatically converts it. reg2inf requires .NET 2 and i dont know if the drag-n-drop feature is the reason for this. either way, send him a PM, he might be able to help.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 10:11 pm

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll see what I can do.

But me, an inf magician? *giggle* Thanks for the compliment!

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:25 pm

Hehehehe, I can't believe how simple that turned out to be. Your cries have been heard, Mrs Peel, this utility now has drag and drop support. Of course I don't know how Sendto addons work so let me know if that needs anything else.

Edit: whoops, in my excitement I forgot about directories that -don't- have spaces

Give me a moment while I get 1.1a ready.
Edit2: Victory in Europe.

Mrs Peel · Post by **Mrs Peel** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 1:01 am

Mitsuko Aninikkou wrote:Hehehehe, I can't believe how simple that turned out to be. Your cries have been heard, Mrs Peel, this utility now has drag and drop support. Of course I don't know how Sendto addons work so let me know if that needs anything else.

Yay you!!! And since one good turn deserves another hehehe....

Simplify_INF_SendTo_Addon_v0.11a-070918 (75 KB)
MD5: 0C4DEF371AAF0C84F6EDD8C957AE8018

Simplify_INF_SendTo_Addon_v0.21-070920 (75 KB)
MD5: 731139E517B5E6E889C03264E7B0C9E4

Simplify_INF_SendTo_Addon_v0.30-070921 (78 KB)
MD5: 022522AE9B4F9DAAE37EE70FA3173BAF

Simplify_INF_SendTo_Addon_v0.30b-070925 (79 KB)
MD5: D1F70A021348A746D1C0353D597E454A

Kelsenellenelvian · Post by **Kelsenellenelvian** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:36 am

Code: Select all

[Taskmain]
Name = TaskSwitchXP
CmdLine = 16422,%TaskMain%,TaskSwitchXP.exe
SubDir = Utilities
WorkingDir = 16422,%TaskMain%
InfoTip = Amuchmorepowerfullreplacmentofthealt+tabfunction.

[UPX]
Name = UPX,0x00000008,9
CmdLine = 11,,upx.exe
IconPath = 11,,upx.ico
WorkingDir = 11

[WhyReboot]
Name = WhyReboot
CmdLine = 11,,WhyReboot.exe
SubDir = Utilities
WorkingDir = 11
InfoTip = Listspendingfileoperationsthatwilloccurduringrebootingyourcomputer.

Hmmm I like this tool so far but it really mussed my infotip sections

So do I need to start using quotes or can this be fixed?

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:41 am

I'll post a fixed version as soon as I can, Kel. Unfortunately due to the way this utility currently works, it's hard to maintain code sanity. I'm considering rewriting it in some clearer way, only I'm not sure how yet. Fixing this situation shouldn't be too hard though.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:12 pm

I'm working on a new version as we speak; unfortunately it's producing garbled output at the moment so I'll have to do some debugging, but otherwise I'm much happier with the code now, so expect to see a new version sometime tonight.

arco · Post by **arco** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:44 pm

Thanks Mitsuko for your work so late last night

(If you're Dutch clock is the same as me).

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:08 pm

Thanks arco, and yeah, it got pretty late last night. Finding how to do the drag and drop thing was frustrating at first, then fun as it turned out to be so simple. Anyway, check out the new release

To Kel: this release fixes the problem you reported. However I'm currently not detecting the Infotip directly, so any assignment symbols will have a space in front of and after them ([text] = [text]) and commas no spaces at all ([text],[text]). I don't know if it's even legal to use these symbols here without using quotes, but if it is and this behaviour bothers you, let me know and I'll add a special case for Infotips.

Mrs Peel · Post by **Mrs Peel** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:03 pm

Thanks for the update Mitsuko, but now I have a bug that was not present in version 1.1a.

It parses this block of code:

Code: Select all

[Prog.AddShortcut]
Name       = %prof_lnk%
CmdLine    = 16422,%prog_dir%,%prog_exe%.exe
SubDir     = %prof_dir%
WorkingDir = 16422,%prog_dir%
InfoTip    = %prof_tip%

[Prog.QuickLaunch]
Name       = %prof_qck%,8,26
CmdLine    = 16422,%prog_dir%,%prog_exe%.exe
SubDir     = %qcklaunch%
WorkingDir = 16422,%prog_dir%

as:

Code: Select all

[Prog.AddShortcut]
Name = %prof_lnk%
CmdLine = 16422,%prog_dir%,%prog_exe%.exe
SubDirdLine = 16422,%prog_dir%,%prog_exe%.exe
SubDir = %qcklaunch%
WorkingDir = 16422,%prog_dir%

That's quite a chunk of lines it's munching up there, so I hope this copy/paste helps your troubleshooting.

I'm just wondering, would it be a simple thing to write a version of this that only removes the commented lines from the INF? Cos that is all I am really interested in cleaning up from my INF files and I actually like to preserve any extra spaces I put in there so that my variables line up in columns (so much easier to read when you are scanning through your code looking for bugs)

Thanks a bunch

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:13 pm

Hmm, that's a rather odd bug. Tell me - if you run it again on the same original file, do you get the same output? I had some odd corruption show up earlier that I think might be due to MinGW's file operations being utterly unstable, because it went away when I tried again. As for your idea of removing only comments, I know what you mean. It shouldn't be that hard to make a more limited version, but I intend to add a second pass to it that ligns up everything properly. Of course, this may take some time to do, and I definitely need to check out this bug first.

Edit: I just checked your quoted code and it doesn't eat the lines for me. So this may indeed be the file access functions messing up. I have long suspected them to be fundamentally broken and unstable, and I'll have to look into alternatives.

code65536 · Post by **code65536** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:21 pm

If you drag a file to an executable file in the Windows shell, Windows should execute the file with the dragged files passed as command line parameters. This is not so much drag-and-drop as it is making use of the process execution behavior of the Windows shell, and as such, it's a behavior that is always available.

The other way drag-and-drop can be handled is if your app creates a window, in which case, you can have the window handle drag-and-drop messages. But I doubt that's what you want.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:34 pm

Yep, I didn't realise this at first but looking at your pendmove utility gave me the idea to do it this way

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 4:36 pm

v0.21 posted. It should be more stable now. I'm going to work on stability even more as I start on the next phase, which will add a second pass to lign stuff up.

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:06 pm

can you add a console >out file support for this
so it runs in batch script as well and without leaving any traces

Simplifinf HIVESYS.INF newfile\HIVESYS.INF

as to problems with coded files
may be you can deal with this by converting/shifting around the formats
Unicode ,UTF-8 ,ANSI ,so then the script may run correctly

but I'm not the expert for this and a little grey on the matter as well

anyways well done!

ricktendo64 · Post by **ricktendo64** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:55 pm

How come this does not work for me?

EDIT: I found a bug...
When you try to Simplify .INF files (extention written with CAPS) it complains its not a .inf file. Example: HIVESYS.INF

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:58 pm

What happens when you try it, rick? Does it create an empty file, garbled output, or does it do nothing at all?

Edit: good find, I completely forgot about that case. It should still work if you tell it to continue anyway, the file extension detection is simple but pretty robust.

ricktendo64 · Post by **ricktendo64** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:02 pm

Blank a couple of times, but I did get one with a bunch of nul's

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:07 pm

Hmm, odd. Could you try the following version? Only difference is it isn't UPXed.

Link: here
MD5: 210E533DDE96E609FA0077EDE3C58E76

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:13 pm

ENU_user wrote:can you add a console >out file support for this
so it runs in batch script as well and without leaving any traces

Simplifinf HIVESYS.INF newfile\HIVESYS.INF

Hmm, the following should work after I fix the uppercase extension issue:

Code: Select all

Simplifinf HIVESYS.INF

which will create a file called HIVESYS new.INF in the same directory. No support for multiple filenames yet, although this should be rather simple to add.

Mrs Peel · Post by **Mrs Peel** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:36 pm

Cool bananas, I don't get this bug I reported above in version v2.1

Thanks a bunch!

PS: Updated SendTo addon (see link further up page)

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:41 pm

once you can add the out files then im sure this will be put in to use with the integrator as a plugin or built in

i can use it for some tool where i remove stuff

if you can find away to deal with these
NTPRINT.INF ,INTL.INF i think you will be done with most issues

or if you can fix the typo's as i think the format isn't so important so long as the setup can read anyways.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:28 pm

Well, we're not talking typos here, we're talking total corruption. Some garbage latin alphabet letters followed by some, I dunno, Chinese or something, followed by.. well, you get the idea. I should be able to work something out when I start using Win32 API functions for reading in the files.

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:42 pm

check MIGDB.INF youre script manages to get some stuff right
look for the section where all the garbage begins
thats y i thought so ..

can't wait

TechnoHunter · Post by **TechnoHunter** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:17 pm

@ENU_user :: latest version from the link above tested against the file you asked produced a perfect new inf.. only thing different according to a diff was the lines with a ; being gone

try it again and see what happens..

TechnoHunter

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:37 pm

Yeah, MIGDB.INF converts perfectly for me, it's an ANSI file. Also a good example of why this is useful! Talk about inconsistent spacing, sheesh. My second pass (that I haven't written yet, hehe) should do wonders for the placement, too.
The corruption you saw was almost certainly due to my heavy use of streambuffers in earlier versions. These objects and the associated functions seem somewhat unstable, to put it mildly, and doing anything complicated like moving pointers about seems to break them. v0.21 reduces my use of these greatly, and so is a lot more stable. The upcoming v0.25 will reduce their use even more, and in the future I intend to move away from them altogether. I just don't trust them anymore.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:43 pm

Updated! ^_^

ricktendo64 · Post by **ricktendo64** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:01 pm

Still blank... Here give it a go Mitsuko

http://www.mediafire.com/?8dd1nz3eiyq

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 4:47 pm

Hmm, that's a Unicode encoded text file, rick, no support for those yet (it says in the first post

). I don't know if there are any special characters in there (didn't see any) but you can try saving it as an ANSI file - it'll work fine then.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 5:51 pm

Updated to v0.30! Check it out, Mrs Peel, now stuff ligns up again

ricktendo64 · Post by **ricktendo64** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:07 pm

Yep dam notepad2

Mrs Peel · Post by **Mrs Peel** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:28 pm

Mitsuko Aninikkou wrote:Updated to v0.30! Check it out, Mrs Peel, now stuff ligns up again

My clever little INF Magician! Works purrrrrrrfectly on all counts now YAYYYYYYYY. And SendTo addon updated too

I know I am being a total hypocrite here (since I hate it so much when users keep suggesting more work that I should do with my own addon packs LOL), but would there also be the possibility that this could output directly to the clipboard?

I am just pondering about everyday use of this and how it means I need to first run the utility, and then open the new file, copy contents, and then paste back into my original file. An option to print to clipboard would save that extra step (nEpsilons reg2inf has a "print option" which I find useful sometimes too).

But then again, it is probably prudent to run a text-diff between the original and modified code to make sure nothing went wrong in the parsing.... so maybe not such a good idea after all. I just woke up here, so maybe I'll be pondering more lucidly after my morning espresso's hehe

Cheers m'dears!!!!

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:49 pm

i was only going about to suggest to make the original file as *.old or *.bak
so the new inf takes over the original -name-
like many apps do in some cases ,good for drag and drop (sendto) thing.

@Mitsuko thanks for implementing out file very useful now.

well done!

Mrs Peel · Post by **Mrs Peel** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:12 pm

ENU_user wrote:i was only going about to suggest to make the original file as *.old or *.bak so the new inf takes over the original -name- like many apps do in some cases ,good for drag and drop (sendto) thing.

Now THAT is a good scheme jelly bean! This would solve my issue above just purrrfectly and saves renaming or c/p to original file. Cheers ENU_user.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 3:01 am

Well, as you may realise this is taking up a lot of my time

It's okay, because I'm learning a lot about the Win32 API, which I'll need for an important project.. but right now that does mean I have to look into how to create, open, read and write files just using that. Because it's working stably and doing what I want it to do, I'll hold off on adding more functionality for now so I can reevaluate its basic structure. Expect to see support for switches in the next version (unless some major bug is found in this one in which case I'll make a bugfix release) along with something like the suggested naming scheme. However, this time it might take a bit longer.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:40 am

Updated to 0.30a to fix tab handling.

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 6:24 am

im getting the same -CAPS- bug when using the outfile in batch

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:29 am

Hmm, I might've overlooked that, sorry. Caps thing was a pain to fix, could you give me an example of a commandline that will produce the bug?

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 11:01 am

Code: Select all

File is either empty or does not exist. Enter a different filename? (y/n):

that's what i got for trying to execute Simplifinf on a file that truly didn't exist.
wile working out something in batch mode
i have wrongly written something haven't noticed that
and didn't read the message properly

Simplifinf works perfectly with batch. no problems at all

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 11:46 am

Hehe, cool then.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:04 pm

Update: I found an ANSI inf file that won't convert (It's very likely crashing one of the stages in Simplifinf). Rather than figuring out what's going wrong, however, I'm going to focus on splitting the various things the first pass does into multiple passes. This is the only sane way I can add configuration support, and although speed will undoubtedly suffer it will also greatly increase code sanity and modularity (so I can add more passes much more easily)

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 12:42 am

i think this was the one i bumped into before:

Code: Select all

This file does not have the inf file extension; continue anyway?

Simplifinf some.txt some.INF
where some.txt exists offcourse ..

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 5:54 am

Yeah, that's just some protection I built in. 'course it'll all be rewritten when I add config support.

Mitsuko Aninikkou · Post by **Mitsuko Aninikkou** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:11 am

Updated to 0.30b to fix the crashing bug I mentioned earlier. To anyone interested: check out the source, I made a lot of changes in order to make this program fully modular. Adding configuration support should be a simple thing, now.