Calling WriteRegMultiStr in NSIS properly

Question

With version 3.02 of NSIS came the addition of the WriteRegMultiStr function. When the function is called in my script the script throws an error:

Usage: WriteRegMultiStr /REGEDIT5 rootkey subkey entry_name hex_string_like_660000000000
root_key=(HKCR[32|64]|HKLM[32|64]|HKCU[32|64]|HKU|HKCC|HKDD|HKPD|SHCTX)

The call itself looks like this:

WriteRegMultiStr /REGEDIT5 HKLM "System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SomeService" "DependsOnService" "service1 service2"

Since there is no documentation on this specific function which was added later on, long after WriteRegStr and WriteRegDWORD were available, I have to wonder - how does one use it?

So far with respect to entering REG_MULTI_SZ values I only found the directive to use a registry-NSIS -plugin. Yet the function exists, so how can it be used?

Addendum:

Encoding the string to hex and passing it with ot without quotation marks yields no desirable result either.

How can you say there is no documentation? The NSIS documentation has example code using this instruction. — Anders
Ahh yes, I remember that. Tried that sample code with an older version of NSIS which resulted in the sample not working. Did not remember it existed after updating to 3.04. — Koenigsberg

Anders Anders · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-22T10:01:06

As you found out, the value data must be in the exact same format as .reg files from Windows 2000+.

The reason this instruction works this way is because it is actually the same as WriteRegBin under the hood and very little code was added to support this new functionality.

In the future you might be able to drop the /REGEDIT5 switch and give it plain strings but support for that has not been added yet.

The Registry plug-in does allow you to write these strings in a sane manner.

Calling WriteRegMultiStr in NSIS properly

2 Answers