streamlining php.ini; php.ini is not parsable with parse_ini_file

All, I want to clean up my PHP.ini file on production to be as streamlined as possible so that it's easier to work with and maintain. It is easier to do a diff of my INI and the recommended INI if both files are very similar with whitespace removed, comments cleaned out, and keys sorted, etc. I've tried to use parse_ini_file() function to parse the INI file, but that won't work because the 'extension = *' key is used multiple times in the php.ini. parse_ini_file assumes unique assoc array is returned. I'm guessing PHP doesn't actually use the parse_ini_file to read its own ini. So, I then started parsing the ini myself with my own custom code and soon realized that PHP might not be using the [section] tags either as it uses the INI key=values. Seems like the [section] tags are used more like suggestions for key grouping than for anything functional. Is this a correct assumption? If so, I've got the following INI reading code which will munch the php.ini-recommended and output just the strings which are not commented out. See here and let me know if this looks like robust code: //---------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/usr/bin/php <?php // we pass the name of an INI file on the command line $script = array_shift($argv); $ini_file_name = array_shift($argv); if (!$ini_file_name || !file_exists($ini_file_name)) { die("usage: $script <php.ini file>\n"); } // slurp in the whole ini file and init $lines = file($ini_file_name); $data = array(); foreach ($lines as $line) { // remove trailing comments, newlines, and start/end whitespace $line = trim(preg_replace("/;[^\"\']*$/", "", trim($line))); // skip blank lines, commented lines, ini sections, or anything without an '=' in the line if (!$line || $line{0} === ';' || $line{0} === '[' || strpos($line, '=') < 1) {

       continue;

} // fix spacing between equal sign list ($key, $value) = preg_split("/\s*=\s*/", $line, 2); $line = "$key = $value"; // save this key=value pair array_push($data, $line); } // sort and print all keys sort($data); print join("\n", $data); ?> //---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dante