Read / Write text file.

Sometimes people post criticisms and then say that that should be the end of the conversation and that no further comments should be made. That is unreasonable; people can't have both. Either post criticisms or say that they don't intend to say anything more but don't do both, including telling the other person to not comment further.
 
I do agree there is no value in continuing this.
 

I did not say that you insist on any particular method and nor do I, I work on the basis of what is best for the situation and I considered the example I gave as the simplest solution for the question being asked as I understood it at that time from the many years of experience that I have.

It seems that Giorgio is not entirely sure about anything and I do not criticize him for this as he is learning what my problem is with all of this, dare I say it, crap, is that so many different methods were thrown at Giorgio along with misinformation that for a learner it would be confusing and daunting to deal with the different methodologies to achieve a simple task.

The question was asked in different ways in different threads, this also went to the heart of the matter where it appeared that Georgio did not know what he wanted and how to achieve it.  

Georgio goes of on a tangent learning things that are not necessary to learn if it is known that it is NOT going to be done that way at all.

It is like a heart surgeon practicing on a healthy patient replacing a healty heart with a mechanical one just to see how the mechanical one would works.

What a waste of time and effort, this would be best utilized learning the methods and procedures of the tools you know you will be using.

I have at all times in this thread and others relating to same, maintained the one methodology, and tyhat is using a stream reader to read in was or should have been a controled CSV file.

Never once did I say learn THIS but you should know that THIS will be useless and that you should learn THAT but by the way you can do it THIS way if you used THIS or THAT but on the other hand you could youe STREAM READER / WRITER which I said in the first place.

Now obviously Georgio likes to be bounced around a room like a rubber ball, that is his choice and I will not deny him his rights to do that but you are offering tuition and you are bouncing him around.

Sometimes it is best to leave crumbs for people to follow, if Georgio is really keen to learn then he will pick up the crumbs and follow through with his own ideas and solutions which could ultimately be one of the methods you or I or anyone else suggested doing this may actually produce a really good programmer and this is the aim is it not!

Now Sam, I have had a number of businesses over the years, one of those businesses was a software development house where we developed administrative applications dealing with educational institutions, our clients were state and federal government as well as other very high profile international organizations, I have been out of this business for some time now but it is still operational and still dealing with the organizations mentioned.

The best solution for Georgio's needs is HIS choice not yours, not mine, whatever he is comfortable with is fine by me, I would not be upset by the fact that he did not choose my method.

Now let this be the end.

One last piece of advice, be consistent with your advice to others and help them learn, let them find out about histories of how and what is happening in programming let them ask specific questions and simply point in the right direction don't spoon feed them.
     

I don't insist that one way is best. You give the impression that you think flexibility is inferior and that there has to be one answer. I think that the answer to the question of what is best is that it depends on the requirements. Good software developers research requirements and then analyze them to determine what might be best. Sometimes the answer depends on personal experience and preferences. Businesses might choose the software that they want to use.

So which is the best answer Sam, ADO, OLE, JET ODBC, Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO, oh, hang on now it is StreamReader / Writer in your 'article' all your code is it Sam, one thing about you Sam, you are consistent, you don't know which is the best approach do you.

I think just about everything has been suggested by now so what will be next? I can hardly wait for your next suggestion.

Talk about adding layer upon layer upon layer, reminds me of Sarah Lea, makes great cakes but useless programs.

Also see Using CSV and Other Delimited Files in C#.

See Simplistic Grid. It puts data into a DataGridView and gets the data out when the form is closed. It does not do much more than that but I hope it is enough to get you started.

Sam:
 
YES... I would be intersted in that. Sounds a lot better that doing it with a txt file. I would like to see the code.

Yes, doing things such as editing the data is exactly why it is easier to use ADO. Using ADO, .Net will do a lot for you.

What you can do is to read the CSV file into a DataTable, then bind a DataGridView to the DataTable. Or you can put the data into a DataGridView without a DataTable; I posted some code for that a few days ago. I think the question asked about how to put a two-dimensional array into a DataGridView. Are you interested in that?

Sam:
 
I got this issue working well with the txt type sample code.
 
However, its a pain to edit the txt file. I have been surfing on how I can open an excel file. So this way I can change it easier outside of my application. I found 2 connectionStrings but neither one works. LOL
 

The VisualBasic DLL has many useful classes that are not part of .Net but can be used by C#. Many experts would say it is wise to use the VisualBasic DLL. I am somewhat skeptical but I sure am not aware of any actual reason not to use it.
 
In my opinion, there should be a standard for CSV files that is supported by the CLI such as .Net and by languages such as C++. The VisualBasic DLL is the closest to that in Microsoft software.

Sam:
With the "using System.Data.Odbc", seems I have the same issue. It does not work when I build with 'All CPU' but it works great with 'x86'.
I went back and forth a few times to be sure.
I will now try the: "Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO"

Hi Sam.

Having quotes is not a big deal, all it means is that you could not use String.Split, you would have to do the splitting yourself and that is NOT difficult.

Dealing with the other things is really not that big a deal either.

Before String.Split or anything else that you can use came along, these little jobs had to be done by the programmer and you would be amazed at how much a person can learn about programming by doing these little tasks.

String manipulation is a very important part of programming don't you think?

Pulling apart strings and analyzing the components like html tags is probably how browsers work, eg, tells the browser that I need a window created ( in simple terms that is all a div actual is ).

CSV's are no diferent.

Sorry Sam I must have missed something,

How much more  difficult can CSV get?

Comma Separated Values like a,b,c,d is a simple data structure is it not?

How could you make CSV more complicated!!!!

Yes, for data as simple as the sample data provided in this question, there is not need to get fancy. However if the data is more complicated CSV data, then that will make the code more complicated. The CSV format was common in Basic and VB has some special support for CSV files. The VB TextFieldParser class can simplify things, even for complex CSV data.

using System;

using Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO;



namespace _79182

{

	class Program

	{

		static void Main(string[] args)

		{

			string Path = @"C:\Users\Sam\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\C-SharpCorner\79182";

			string Filename = "Data.txt";

			TextFieldParser Parser;

			try

			{

				Parser = new TextFieldParser(Path + '\\' + Filename);

				Parser.TextFieldType = FieldType.Delimited;

				Parser.SetDelimiters(",");

			}

			catch (Exception ex)

			{

				Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", ex.ToString());

				return;

			}

			String[] Fields = null;

			int Line = 0;

			while (!Parser.EndOfData)

			{

				try

				{

					Fields = Parser.ReadFields();

				}

				catch (Exception ex)

				{

					Console.WriteLine("Line {0} is not valid; error: {1}", ++Line, ex.Message);

				}

				if (Fields.Length != 4)

				{

					Console.WriteLine("Line does not have 4 fields:");

					Console.WriteLine("\t{0}", Fields);

				}

				else

					Console.WriteLine("{0} | {1} | {2} | {3}", Fields[0], Fields[1], Fields[2], Fields[3]);

			}

		}

	}

}

//a class to store values
class lineElement
    {
    public string[] elements = new string[0];
    }


//your function to open and read the file..

lineElement[] e = new lineElement[0];            
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(dlgOpen.FileName);
string l = "";
while((l = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
    {
    //make sure you do some error checking like null strings etc..
    Array.Resize(ref e, e.Length +1);
    e[e.Length-1] = new lineElement();
    Array.Resize(ref e[e.Length-1].elements, getCount(",", l));
    e[e.Length-1].elements = l.Split(new char[] {','});
    }

//a function to get how many delimiters in the line read from the file
private int getCount(string delim, string l)
    {
    int count = 0;
    while (l.IndexOf(delim) > 0)
        {
        l = l.Remove(l.IndexOf(delim), 1);
        count++;            
        }
    return(count);
    }

The above will allow you to read a file with mixed lengths of delimited values

it will read this  -- User,Password,Sysytem,Database

as well as this Scott,Scott1212,HPV64

or this Scott,Scott1212

or this Bill,Bill3434,HPV64,Devel,User,Password,Sytem,Database

without any problem and with

once you have the array you can do what you want, add, edit, delete its not that hard to do...

Ps.  No Odbc, No Jet, No data adapters to bloat the system just simple string manipulation..

Sam:
 
I looked around and it seems I do have the Msjet40.dll
 
But I do get the error posted above for the code:
da.Fill(dt);
 
I would really like to use your solution... If I can get rid of this error.

Sam:
 
I tried to test your sample and I can not get it to work. Seems from the information that I found by surfing is that the Jet.OLEDB is not supported on a x64 machine.
 
I get the error: The 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on the local machine.
 
Any suggestions?

Yeah, to be honest, the subject of that post is Regex so you would not expect it to have the sample code that it does have.
 
The important thing is that if your text file is in the format of a CSV then you can read it into a DataTable quite easily.

Sam:
 
Thanks, I will look at sample.
 
I usually try to spent 1-2 hours searching for my solution, untill I post. I tried to search but could not find anything that could help me. I must of not used the correct key words to find it. Thanks... will look at your sample.

Here are two articles on how to read and write text files:
TextReader and TextWriter in C#

FileStream : Read or Write Data Streams

You may also want to look into object serialization and deserialization. Search this site for these keywords.