I am trying to get my vb program to read from a file - vb.net

Question

I am trying to get my program to read from a file on visual basic but it keeps saying the file does not exist, I have tried different file paths and other things but i cant seem to get it working.
my code is :
Option Strict On
Imports System.IO
Public Class MOTform
Dim custfile As StreamReader
Dim strCustArray() As String
Dim strCustDetails As String
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
radMOTYes.Checked = True
If File.Exists("cust_db.txt") Then
' Open the file.
custfile = File.OpenText("cust_db.txt")
Else
MessageBox.Show("cust_db.txt" & " does not exist.")
End If
strCustDetails = custfile.ReadLine()
strCustArray = Split(strCustDetails, ",")
Me.Text = strCustDetails
custfile.Close()
End Sub

Answer 1

go to the file you want to read from, right click on it, click Properties, copy the path from Location and insert it to the code

Answer 2

Your code expects the file in the same folder where your program runs because you don't have any kind of path. This is fine when you deploy your final executable because there is no BIN\DEBUG there.
In debug inside VS instead you need to have that file in that folder for the same reason. Your debugged exe runs in that folder. You can add the txt file to your project and change the property Copy to Output Directory to Copy Always.
However, keeping a data file in the same folder where your program runs is not a good practice, in particular if the file is not read only.
The operating system can prevent your application to change that file if you deploy your application in some kind of reserved folder (like C:\program files).
I suggest to use the config file adding an AppSettings key to specify the folder where you keep the file and then reading that key at runtime to build your path
For example
<appSettings>
<add key="DataFolder" value="C:\programdata\myappdatafolder"/>
</appSettings>
and then
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
radMOTYes.Checked = True
Dim fullFileName = Path.Combine(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("DataFolder"), "cust_db.txt")
If File.Exists(fullFileName) Then
' Open the file.
custfile = File.OpenText(fullFileName)
Else
MessageBox.Show(fullFileName & " does not exist.")
End If
In this way you can change the configuration file to have your file where is most convenient for your scenario