I understand it’s a database that holds on system/application configurations in windows but how does this all work from a programming/code level? I’m learning C and Java programming languages (2nd year) and we usually call what we need from other files. I read that the registry replaces .INI files but how are settings from the registry called by other programs? Was the registry written in C or some other Win API?
The registry is viewed as a hierarchy of named values. The names are strings, the values can be of various types.
Raw access to the registry is through the Win32 API, RegOpenKey is probably the function you need to look out first (it’s like the file open for the registry). RegOpenKey is part of a family that provide all the registry operations.
The registry is available from most languages that permit privileged operations. The registry itself is written in C++ code, as is most of the core of Windows.