Develop Reference

Alternative to File.AppendAllText for newline

I am trying to read characters from a file and then append them in another file after removing the comments (which are followed by semicolon).
sample data from parent file:
Name- Harly Brown ;Name is Harley Brown
Age- 20 ;Age is 20 years
Desired result:
Name- Harley Brown
Age- 20
I am trying the following code-
StreamReader infile = new StreamReader(floc + "G" + line + ".NC0");
while (infile.Peek() != -1)
{
letter = Convert.ToChar(infile.Read());
if (letter == ';')
{
infile.ReadLine();
}
else
{
System.IO.File.AppendAllText(path, Convert.ToString(letter));
}
}
But the output i am getting is-
Name- Harley Brown Age-20
Its because AppendAllText is not working for the newline. Is there any alternative?

Sure, why not use File.AppendAllLines. See documentation here.
Appends lines to a file, and then closes the file. If the specified file does not exist, this method creates a file, writes the specified lines to the file, and then closes the file.
It takes in any IEnumerable<string> and adds every line to the specified file. So it always adds the line on a new line.
Small example:
const string originalFile = #"D:\Temp\file.txt";
const string newFile = #"D:\Temp\newFile.txt";
// Retrieve all lines from the file.
string[] linesFromFile = File.ReadAllLines(originalFile);
List<string> linesToAppend = new List<string>();
foreach (string line in linesFromFile)
{
// 1. Split the line at the semicolon.
// 2. Take the first index, because the first part is your required result.
// 3. Trim the trailing and leading spaces.
string appendAbleLine = line.Split(';').FirstOrDefault().Trim();
// Add the line to the list of lines to append.
linesToAppend.Add(appendAbleLine);
}
// Append all lines to the file.
File.AppendAllLines(newFile, linesToAppend);
Output:
Name- Harley Brown
Age- 20
You could even change the foreach-loop into a LINQ-expression, if you prefer LINQ:
List<string> linesToAppend = linesFromFile.Select(line => line.Split(';').FirstOrDefault().Trim()).ToList();

Why use char by char comparison when .NET Framework is full of useful string manipulation functions?
Also, don't use a file write function multiple times when you can use it only one time, it's time and resources consuming!
StreamReader stream = new StreamReader("file1.txt");
string str = "";
while ((string line = infile.ReadLine()) != null) { // Get every line of the file.
line = line.Split(';')[0].Trim(); // Remove comment (right part of ;) and useless white characters.
str += line + "\n"; // Add it to our final file contents.
}
File.WriteAllText("file2.txt", str); // Write it to the new file.

You could do this with LINQ, System.File.ReadLines(string), and System.File.WriteAllLines(string, IEnumerable<string>). You could also use System.File.AppendAllLines(string, IEnumerable<string>) in a find-and-replace fashion if that was, in fact, the functionality you were going for. The difference, as the names suggest, is whether it writes everything out as a new file or if it just appends to an existing one.
System.IO.File.WriteAllLines(newPath, System.IO.File.ReadLines(oldPath).Select(c =>
{
int semicolon = c.IndexOf(';');
if (semicolon > -1)
return c.Remove(semicolon);
else
return c;
}));
In case you aren't super familiar with LINQ syntax, the idea here is to loop through each line in the file, and if it contains a semicolon (that is, IndexOf returns something that is over -1) we cut that off, and otherwise, we just return the string. Then we write all of those to the file. The StreamReader equivalent to this would be:
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(oldPath))
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(newPath))
{
string line;
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
int semicolon = line.IndexOf(';');
if (semicolon > -1)
line = c.Remove(semicolon);
writer.WriteLine(line);
}
}
Although, of course, this would feed an extra empty line at the end and the LINQ version wouldn't (as far as I know, it occurs to me that I'm not one hundred percent sure on that, but if someone reading this does know I would appreciate a comment).
Another important thing to note, just looking at your original file, you might want to add in some Trim calls, since it looks like you can have spaces before your semicolons, and I don't imagine you want those copied through.

Read and extract from file

I have a huge file with ~3 mill rows. Every line contains record like this:
1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
Exactly 8 separators like '|' on every line. I am looking for a way to read this file then extract last '9' number only from every line and store it into another file.
edit:
Ok here is what i done already.
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(filepath))
using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(filepath1))
{
string line = null;
while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
sw.WriteLine(line.Split('|')[8]);
}
File.WriteAllLines("filepath", File.ReadAllLines(filepath).Where(l => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(l)));
Read file, extract last digits then write in new file and clear blank lines. Last digit is 10-15 symbols and I want to extract first 6. I continue to read and try some and when I'm done or have some question I'll edit again.
Thanks
Edit 2:
Ok, here I take first 8 digits from the number:
sw.WriteLine(line.Substring(0, Math.Min(line.Length, 8)));
Edit 3:
I have no idea how can I match now every numbers that left in file. I want to match them and to see witch number how many times is in the file.
Any help?

I am looking for a way to read this file then extract last [..] number only from every line and store it into another file.
What part exactly are you having trouble with? In psuedo code, this is what you want:
fileReader = OpenFile("input")
fileWriter = OpenFile("output")
while !fileReader.EndOfFile
line = fileReader.ReadLine
records[] = line.Split('|')
value = records[8]
fileWriter.WriteLine(value)
do
So start implementing it and feel free to ask a question on any specific line you're having trouble with. Each line of code I posted contains enough pointers to figure out the C# code or the terms to do a web search for it.

You don't say where you are stuck. Break the problem down:
Write and run minimal C# program
Read lines from file
Break up one line
write result line to a file
Are you stuck on any one of those? Then ask a specific question about that. This decomposition technique is key to many programming tasks, and indeed complex tasks in general.
You might find the string split capability useful.

Because it's a huge file you must read it line by line!
public IEnumerable ReadFileIterator(String filePath)
{
using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(filePath, Encoding.Default))
{
String line;
while ((line = streamReader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
yield return line;
}
yield break;
}
}
public void WriteToFile(String inputFilePath, String outputFilePath)
{
using (StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(outputFilePath, true, Encoding.Default))
{
foreach (String line in ReadFileIterator(inputFilePath))
{
String[] subStrings = line.Split('|');
streamWriter.WriteLine(subStrings[8]);
}
streamWriter.Flush();
streamWriter.Close();
}
}

using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("input"))
using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter("output"))
{
string line = null;
while ((line=sr.ReadLine())!=null)
sw.WriteLine(line.Split('|')[8]);
}

Some pointer to start from: StreamReader.Readline() and String.Split(). There are examples on both pages.

With LINQ you could do a thing like the following to filter the numbers:
var numbers = from l in File.ReadLines(fileName)
let p = l.Split('|')
select p[8];
and then write them into a new file like that:
File.WriteAllText(newFileName, String.Join("\r\n", numbers));

Use String.Split() to get the line inside an array and get the last element and store it into another file. Repeat the process for each line.

Try this...
// Read the file and display it line by line.
System.IO.StreamReader file =
new System.IO.StreamReader("c:\\test.txt");
while((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
{
string[] words = s.Split('|');
string value = words [8]
Console.WriteLine (value);
}
file.Close();

Searching for text in a .txt

What would be the best way to search a text file that looks like this..?
efee|| Nbr| Address| Name |Phone|City|State|Zip abc
||455|gsgd |first last|gsg |fef |jk |0393 gjgj||jfj|ddg
|first last|fht |ree |hn |th ...more lines...
I started by reading in the file and all its contexts with a streamreader
I was thinking to count the "|" and grab the text between the 5th and 6th using substring but i'm not sure how to do the count of the "|". Or if someone has a better idea I'm open to it.
Tried something like this:
StreamReader file = new StreamReader(#"...");
string line;
int num=0;
while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
{
for (int i = 1; i <= 6; i++)
{
if (line.Contains("|"))
{
num++;
}
}
int start = line.IndexOf("|");
int end = line.IndexOf("|");
string result = line.Substring(start, end - start - 1);
}
The text I want I beleive is always between the 5th and 6th "|"

You can do it like this:
var res = File
.ReadLines(#"FileName.txt")
.Select(line => line.Split(new[]{'|'}, StringSplitOptions.None)[5])
.ToList();
This produces a List<strings> from the file, where each string is the part of the corresponding line of the file taken from between the fifth and the sixth '|' separator.

For a delimited file you should use a parser - there is one in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO namespace - the TextFieldParser class, though you could also look at third-party libraries like the popular FileHelpers.
A simpler approach would be to use string.Split on the | character and getting the value in the corresponding index of the returned string[], however, if any of the fields are escaped and can validly contain | internally, this will fail.

You could split each line into an array:
while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
{
var values = line.Split('|');
}

This should work
string txt = File.ReadAllText("file.txt");
string res = Regex.Match(txt, "\\|*?{5}(.+?)\\|", RegexOptions.Singleline).Result("$1");

is there any way to ignore reading in certain lines in a text file?

I'm trying to read in a text file in a c# application, but I don't want to read the first two lines, or the last line. There's 8 lines in the file, so effectivly I just want to read in lines, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.
Is there any way to do this?
example file
_USE [Shelley's Other Database]
CREATE TABLE db.exmpcustomers(
fName varchar(100) NULL,
lName varchar(100) NULL,
dateOfBirth date NULL,
houseNumber int NULL,
streetName varchar(100) NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]_
EDIT
Okay, so, I've implemented Callum Rogers answer into my code and for some reason it works with my edited text file (I created a text file with the lines I didn't want to use omitted) and it does exactly what it should, but whenever I try it with the original text file (above) it throws an exception. I display this information in a DataGrid and I think that's where the exception is being thrown.
Any ideas?

The Answer by Rogers is good, I am just providing another way of doing this.
Try this,
List<string> list = new List<string>();
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(FilePath))
{
string text = "";
while ((text = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
list.Add(text);
}
list.RemoveAt(0);
list.RemoveAt(0);
}
Hope this helps

Why do you want to ignore exactly the first two and the last line?
Depending on what your file looks like you might want to analyze the line, e.g. look at the first character whether it is a comment sign, or ignore everything until you find the first empty line, etc.
Sometimes, hardcoding "magic" numbers isn't such a good idea. What if the file format needs to be changed to contain 3 header lines?
As the other answers demonstrate: Nothing keeps you from doing what you ever want with a line you have read, so of course, you can ignore it, too.
Edit, now that you've provided an example of your file: For your case I'd definitely not use the hardcoded numbers approach. What if some day the SQL statement should contain another field, or if it appears on one instead of 8 lines?
My suggestion: Read in the whole string at once, then analyze it. Safest way would be to use a grammar, but if you presume the SQL statement is never going to be more complicated, you can use a regular expression (still much better than using line numbers etc.):
string content = File.ReadAllText(filename);
Regex r = new Regex(#"CREATE TABLE [^\(]+\((.*)\) ON");
string whatYouWant = r.Match(content).Groups[0].Value;

Why not just use File.ReadAllLines() and then remove the first 2 lines and the last line? With such a small file speed differences will not be noticeable.
string[] allLines = File.ReadAllLines("file.ext");
string[] linesWanted = new string[allLines.Length-3];
Array.Copy(allLines, 2, linesWanted, 0, allLines.Length-3);

If you have a TextReader object wrapping the filestream you could just call ReadLine() two times.
StreamReader inherits from TextReader, which is abstract.
Non-fool proof example:
using (var fs = new FileStream("blah", FileMode.Open))
using (var reader = new StreamReader(fs))
{
reader.ReadLine();
reader.ReadLine();
// Do stuff.
}

string filepath = #"C:\whatever.txt";
using (StreamReader rdr = new StreamReader(filepath))
{
rdr.ReadLine(); // ignore 1st line
rdr.ReadLine(); // ignore 2nd line
string fileContents = "";
while (true)
{
string line = rdr.ReadLine();
if (rdr.EndOfStream)
break; // finish without processing last line
fileContents += line + #"\r\n";
}
Console.WriteLine(fileContents);
}

How about a general solution?
To me, the first step is to enumerate over the lines of a file (already provided by ReadAllLines, but that has a performance cost due to populating an entire string[] array; there's also ReadLines, but that's only available as of .NET 4.0).
Implementing this is pretty trivial:
public static IEnumerable<string> EnumerateLines(this FileInfo file)
{
using (var reader = file.OpenText())
{
while (!reader.EndOfStream)
{
yield return reader.ReadLine();
}
}
}
The next step is to simply skip the first two lines of this enumerable sequence. This is straightforward using the Skip extension method.
The last step is to ignore the last line of the enumerable sequence. Here's one way you could implement this:
public static IEnumerable<T> IgnoreLast<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, int ignoreCount)
{
if (ignoreCount < 0)
{
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("ignoreCount");
}
var buffer = new Queue<T>();
foreach (T value in source)
{
if (buffer.Count < ignoreCount)
{
buffer.Enqueue(value);
continue;
}
T buffered = buffer.Dequeue();
buffer.Enqueue(value);
yield return buffered;
}
}
OK, then. Putting it all together, we have:
var file = new FileInfo(#"path\to\file.txt");
var lines = file.EnumerateLines().Skip(2).IgnoreLast(1);
Test input (contents of file):
This is line number 1.
This is line number 2.
This is line number 3.
This is line number 4.
This is line number 5.
This is line number 6.
This is line number 7.
This is line number 8.
This is line number 9.
This is line number 10.
Output (of Skip(2).IgnoreLast(1)):
This is line number 3.
This is line number 4.
This is line number 5.
This is line number 6.
This is line number 7.
This is line number 8.
This is line number 9.

You can do this:
var valid = new int[] { 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 };
var lines = File.ReadAllLines("file.txt").
Where((line, index) => valid.Contains(index + 1));
Or the opposite:
var invalid = new int[] { 1, 2, 8 };
var lines = File.ReadAllLines("file.txt").
Where((line, index) => !invalid.Contains(index + 1));
If you're looking for a general way to remove the last and the first 2, you can use this:
var allLines = File.ReadAllLines("file.txt");
var lines = allLines
.Take(allLines.Length - 1)
.Skip(2);
But from your example it seems that you're better off looking for the string pattern that you want to read from the file. Try using regexes.

Linebreak in WinForms Textbox

I'm having some trouble dealing with linebreaks here. Basically, the user puts in some data to a textbox that is then saved directly to the database.
When I display the data in my program, I only want to display the first line of the textbox, so I tried
Regex newLine = new Regex("/[\r\n]+/");
String[] lines = newLine.Split(row[data.textColumn.ColumnName].ToString());
SomeLabel.Text = lines[0];
But it display me all lines after another, so if the user puts in
a
b
c
The label displays
abc
How can I get this to work so it only displays the first line?

(I have added this in another answer because this answer is rather large and I think it will make this thread more clear - please leave a comment if I should make it one answer)
I have made this extension method which often have its uses:
public static IEnumerable<string> Lines(this string data)
{
using (var sr = new StringReader(data))
{
string line;
while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
yield return line;
}
}
And you can get the first line with:
var line = data.Lines().First();
This should be a lot faster than .Split when only a subset of the lines is used.

var data = row[data.textColumn.ColumnName].ToString();
And one of these (both work with unix and windows line-seperators). The first is fastest because it does not split every line when your only using the first.
int min = Math.Min(data.IndexOf("\r\n"), data.IndexOf("\n"));
string line;
if (min != -1)
line = data.Substring(0, min);
else
line = data;
or
var lines = data.Split(new[] { "\r\n", "\n" }, StringSplitOptions.None);
var line = lines[0];
(See also a few extension methods I have posted here: How can I convert a string with newlines in it to separate lines?)