movedat Configuration File

All of movedat's settings can be controlled using command line options.  You can also use configuration files to specify commonly used settings.

Locations and Load Order

On startup, movedat may attempt to load configuration information from three locations: a system-wide file, a home directory file, or a path given with command-line option -f.  Below are the canonical paths for each, along with some typical examples.

	macOS / Unix	Windows
System	/etc/movedat.cf	%SystemRoot%\movedat.cf C:\Windows\movedat.cf
Home	$HOME/.movedat.cf /Users/myname/.movedat.cf	%AppData%\DEI\movedat.cf C:\Users\MyName\AppData\DEI\movedat.cf
-f <path>	<path>	<path>

As of version 1.20A, the -f option prevents the System and Home files from being loaded (previously they were all merged).  Specifying a blank path with -f disables all configuration files, relying only on command-line options and default values.  For example:

movedat -f "" ...

Command-line options override all configuration file options.

Format

The configuration file must encoded as UTF-8 (no BOM) or ASCII.  Each line in a configuration file must consist of up to 1022 bytes of text.  For Windows systems, lines should end with CR-LF.  For all other systems, lines should end with LF.

A line whose first byte is a hash (#) character or which consists entirely of spaces and tabs is ignored.  Leading spaces and tabs on an otherwise valid line are skipped.  Valid lines have one of the following formats:

<variable>=<value> <variable> <value>

The second form ignores any leading white space in <value>.  Variable names are not case sensitive.  See the enclosed movedat.cf file for an example.

Configuration variables, along with their corresponding command-line options, are described in the Options section.

A configuration file must contain the following line to work with this version of movedat:

MovedatConfigVersion 1

Do not change or remove that value as it defines the format of the file and movedat may reject or incorrectly parse the file if it has a different number.

Values are set in the order they are read.  If you are enabling diagnostics, it is recommended that you do this as early as possible so that you can see diagnostics for the settings that follow.