MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Help! Is it possible to merge 2 sets of .ini files?

Mister L · 10-16-2019, 07:25 PM

I have no idea how this happened (Sigil crashed a couple of times recently and I presume it happened then, although I am pretty sure I still had everything intact after the last crash and right up to a few hours ago...) but I just noticed that somehow QUITE A LOT of my clips and saved searches have disappeared. Most of them, in fact.

I do have backups of the .ini files but the last one is from the 26th of September and like an eedjit despite making a mental note to do it "as soon as I finish this" I did not make new ones after recently adding / modifying some of these. x( (Lesson learned. Modify clips and / or saved searches, make new backup IMMEDIATELY afterwards).

Using the Compare feature of Notepad++ I can see that there are things present in the saved backup that are gone BUT also some of the recent changes have been preserved in the current files... so I don't think I want to just replace the current file with the backup.

But I also noticed there are numbers at the beginnings of the lines which presumably tell Sigil the order to present the items and if I copy-paste the missing stuff from one file to the other it wreaks havoc with those and I am really not sure I feel up to re-doing all the numbers by hand (saved searches has more than 700 lines of code, plus in addition to adding some new things recently I also modified the order of certain groups). :/

So my question is this:
Is there any way to merge two sets of .ini files to keep the most recent info from each one and get as complete a set of data as possible? (maybe using something a little more sophisticated than just a text editor?)

I realise this is unlikely but before I give up I'd rather ask because you never know...

(Even better --but obviously I don't believe this will be possible even for a second...-- is there any way to recover the .ini versions from, say, this morning / yesterday?)

I'll leave things alone until tomorrow (it's bedtime for me now) and hope that miraculously by then someone will have a solution (bearing in mind that I am not a dev and while I am not afraid of code my skills are limited and basic and my tools stop at Notepad++ and whatever comes by default with Windows 8.1). :/

Thanks in advance for any advice (other than "more frequent backups stupid." Please don't kick me while I'm down).

10-16-2019, 07:25 PM	#1
Mister L Groupie Posts: 179 Karma: 91148 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: Sony 350	Help! Is it possible to merge 2 sets of .ini files? I have no idea how this happened (Sigil crashed a couple of times recently and I presume it happened then, although I am pretty sure I still had everything intact after the last crash and right up to a few hours ago...) but I just noticed that somehow QUITE A LOT of my clips and saved searches have disappeared. Most of them, in fact. I do have backups of the .ini files but the last one is from the 26th of September and like an eedjit despite making a mental note to do it "as soon as I finish this" I did not make new ones after recently adding / modifying some of these. x( (Lesson learned. Modify clips and / or saved searches, make new backup IMMEDIATELY afterwards). Using the Compare feature of Notepad++ I can see that there are things present in the saved backup that are gone BUT also some of the recent changes have been preserved in the current files... so I don't think I want to just replace the current file with the backup. But I also noticed there are numbers at the beginnings of the lines which presumably tell Sigil the order to present the items and if I copy-paste the missing stuff from one file to the other it wreaks havoc with those and I am really not sure I feel up to re-doing all the numbers by hand (saved searches has more than 700 lines of code, plus in addition to adding some new things recently I also modified the order of certain groups). :/ So my question is this: Is there any way to merge two sets of .ini files to keep the most recent info from each one and get as complete a set of data as possible? (maybe using something a little more sophisticated than just a text editor?) I realise this is unlikely but before I give up I'd rather ask because you never know... (Even better --but obviously I don't believe this will be possible even for a second...-- is there any way to recover the .ini versions from, say, this morning / yesterday?) I'll leave things alone until tomorrow (it's bedtime for me now) and hope that miraculously by then someone will have a solution (bearing in mind that I am not a dev and while I am not afraid of code my skills are limited and basic and my tools stop at Notepad++ and whatever comes by default with Windows 8.1). :/ Thanks in advance for any advice (other than "more frequent backups stupid." Please don't kick me while I'm down).