#2426·yq

Unexpected INI parsing of keys with colon

Author: ZashCreated Jul 16, 2025Updated Sep 15, 2026
Labelsbugv4

Describe the bug I tried the new INI support on some random files I had around my system and found that a key like this:key = value gets parsed in a way I did not expect. Notably some Mercurial config files containing lines like default:pushurl = ssh://[email protected]/repo/

Version of yq: 4.46.1 Operating system: linux Installed via: binary release

Input INI Concise yaml document(s) (as simple as possible to show the bug, please keep it to 10 lines or less) data1.ini:

ini
[this:section]
this:line = should really work
bash
yq --input-format ini --output-format json data1.ini

Actual behavior

json
{
  "this:section": {
    "this": "line = should really work"
  }
}

Expected behavior

json
{
  "this:section": {
    "this:line" : "should really work"
  }
}

Additional context I'm not actually sure if INI has a specification and if so, what it says about this.