variantconfig - missing keys

[Jim K. <ji...@ji...>]

Someone has requested a feature for the Variant Configuration File I/O
(variantconfig) library.  Here is the request:

########################################
Together with the indication "Key found", it would be handy if - for =
example
- "Read INI-cluster" would have an extra stringoutput that contains the
name(s) of the missing key(s) so the user knows where to look in the
INI-file.
########################################

I was thinking that there are really two things that you want to test
against:

1) Which sections/keys are in the INI file but not in the LV data =
structure
2) Which sections/keys are in the LV data structure but not in the INI =
file.

The latter (2) is more important, IMO, since the user may want =
notification
as to which elements were populated with default values.  The former (1) =
is
useful when a data structure changes and one might wish to flush the =
data in
the INI file to remove stale sections/keys.

So, the question that I have, is how best to implement this feature?  It
might be useful to return the missing sections/keys in a =
programmatically
useful data structure (more than just a string containing a list of =
missing
sections/keys)

The 'missing sections' could be implemented simply as an array of =
strings --
one element for each missing section.  However, the 'missing keys' =
structure
would be a little more complicated because we would need to include the
section owning the missing keys.  This could be implemented as an array =
of
section clusters, where each section cluster contains the name of the
section and the keys that are missing from the section.  This is shown =
below
(where {} denotes a cluster and [] denotes an array):

[ { section1, [ key1, key2, ... ] }, { section2, [ key1, key2, ... ] }, =
...
]

Any thoughts?

-Jim