read a specific line from a txt file in VB .net - vb.net

In VB.net I'm trying to read in a specific line from a file. An example of the line in the txt file is:
[PATH] = "/this/directory/run.exe"
Now I understand how to open the file for reading and writing in VB, but I need to parse out the path in the "" (quotation marks). Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
--Adam


Finding the line depends on what its distinguishing features are, but basically the idea would be to use LINQ. For example:
Dim line As String = File.ReadAllLines(path).FirstOrDefault(Function (s As String) s.StartsWith("[PATH]")
This gets you the first line that begins with "[PATH]". If you need better discrimination you could use a more sophisticated match such as a regex.
You can then extract the path from the line as per Rubens' or SLaks' answers.


Dim path As String = thatLine.Split("""")(1)


Assuming that the path will never contain quotes, you can use a regular expression:
Dim regex As New Regex(".+=\s*""(.+)""")
Dim path As String = regex.Match(line).Groups(1).Value
Alternatively, you can search for the quotes and extract the part between them using string functions, like this: (This assumes that there will always be exactly two quotes)
Dim pathStart As String = line.IndexOf(""""c) + 1
Dim path As String = line.Substring(pathStart, line.LastIndexOf(""""c) - pathStart)

Related

System.ArgumentException: 'Illegal characters in path.' Error

Please help. I have a piece of code that's already working in other parks of my program, however fails to work when accessed by a certain form so i can't see there can be an error with it. Its an information storage project using text files. A screenshot of the exact code and the error:
I expected it to change the label text to the contents of the text file its trying to read.
Thanks everyone :)

Well, there must be one or more illegal characters coming from your "zoots1.txt" file!
Build the filename and see what it looks like:
Dim zoot1s As String
zoot1s = My.Computer.FileSystem.ReadAllText("zoot1s.txt")
Dim fileName As String
fileName = zoot1s + "c.txt"
MessageBox.Show(fileName)
Dim ClassStrain As String
ClassStrain = My.Computer.FileSystem.ReadAllText(fileName)
TempLabel3.Text = ClassStrain
Timer1.Start()
--- EDIT --
My bad. I Found the issue to be that there is a skip in text where it goes to a new line. As if i had added vbNewline to it. Is there any way to edit the text file and take away the last character so there isnt a new line.
Use the Trim() function to get rid of white space. Also use Path.Combine() to make sure the path is correctly separated from the filename with the correct number of backslashes:
zoot1s = My.Computer.FileSystem.ReadAllText("zoot1s.txt").Trim()
Dim fileName As String = System.IO.Path.Combine(zoot1s, "c.txt")

I think you just missed the most important thing, which is the whole specific path of your file that will be reading data from, specifically after the ReadAllText() method, so instead of this line:
zoom1s=My.computer.FileSystem.ReadAllText('zoot1s.txt")
You should edit it like this:
zoom1s=My.computer.FileSystem.ReadAllTex(My.Computer.FileSystem.CurrentDirectory & \zoot1s.txt")
I hope this can solve your problem.
^_^

Having issues with illegal characters in file path

I am writing a program in VB.NET which loops through a file with some file paths in it to perform an action on. The file paths in this file are each on a line, and i'm looping through the file like:
Dim FileContents As String
FileContents = System.IO.File.ReadAllText("C:\File.txt")
Dim FileSplit As String()
FileSplit = FileContents.Split(vbCrLf)
For Each ThisLine In FileSplit
Dim FileModified As Date
FileModified = System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTime(ThisLine)
'Do something here
Next
Contents of File.txt is:
Y:\Users\localadmin\Desktop\MakeShadowCopy\FileInfo.vb
Y:\Users\localadmin\Desktop\MakeShadowCopy\FindFiles.vb
Y:\Users\localadmin\Desktop\MakeShadowCopy\MakeShadowCopy.sln
Y:\Users\localadmin\Desktop\MakeShadowCopy\MakeShadowCopy.v12.suo
The loop works fine, but it is throwing an exception on the line with GetLastWriteTime() on it, saying that the path contains illegal characters, but it is just a normal string with a file path in it.
If anyone has any ideas, or know how to escape the string going into GetLastWriteTime() that would be much appreciated :)
Thanks!

Probably the lines in your file are not correctly vbCrLf terminated.
If this is the case the Split cannot divide correctly your input in lines and you end up with the whole text passed to the GetLastWriteTime.
Instead of using ReadAllText you could use ReadAllLines and let the work to split the lines to the Framework that knows how to handle the file line break and carriage return codes.
For Each ThisLine In System.IO.File.ReadAllLines("C:\file.txt")
Dim FileModified As Date
FileModified = System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTime(ThisLine.Trim())
Next
Also add a Trim to the ThisLine variable to remove some unseen character added erroneusly to the line

Two ideas:
Use For instead of For Each and ensure that you're getting exception on the very first iteration. If not, you may have issues with one specific file path. Check out iteration variable value if that is the case.
Open the file in a hex editor and ensure that each line is terminating properly. You might have either CR (10) or LF(13) character at the end but not both as normal in Windows.

Validate a csv file

This is my sample file
#%cty_id1,#%ccy_id2,#%cty_src,#%cty_cd3,#%cty_nm4,#%cty_reg5,#%cty_natnl6,#%cty_bus7,#%cty_data8
690,ALL2,,AL,ALBALODMNIA,,,,
90,ALL2,,,AQ,AKNTARLDKCTICA,,,
161,IDR2,,AZ,AZLKFMERBALFKIJAN,,,,
252,LTL2,,BJ,BENLFMIN,,,,
206,CVE2,,BL,SAILFKNT BAFSDRTHLEMY,,,,
360,,,BW2,BOPSLFTSWLSOANA,,,,
The problem is for #%cty_cd3 is a standard column(NOT NULL) with length 2 letters only, but in sql server the record shifts to the other column,(due to a extra comma in btw)how do i validate a csv file,to make sure that
when there's a 2 character word need to be only in 4 column?
there are around 10000 records ?
Set of rules Defined !
Should have a standard set of delimiters for eachrow
if not
Check for NOT NULL values having Null values
If found Null
remove delimiter at the pointer
The 3 ,,, are not replaced with 2 ,,
#UPDATED : Can i know if this can be done using a script ?
Updated i need only a function That operates on records like
90,ALL2,,,AQ,AKNTARLDKCTICA,,, correct them using a Regex or any other method and put back into the source file !

Your best bet here may be to use the tSchemaComplianceCheck component in Talend.
If you read the file in with a tFileInputDelimited component and then check it with the tSchemaComplianceCheck where you set cty_cd to not nullable then it will reject your Antarctica row simply for the null where you expect no nulls.
From here you can use a tMap and simply map the fields to the one above.
You should be able to easily tweak this as necessary, potentially with further tSchemaComplianceChecks down the reject lines and mapping to suit. This method is a lot more self explanatory and you don't have to deal with complicated regex's that need complicated management when you want to accommodate different variations of your file structure with the benefit that you will always capture all of the well formatted rows.

You could try to delete the empty field in column 4, if column no. 4 is not a two-character field, as follows:
awk 'BEGIN {FS=OFS=","}
{
for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) {
if (!(i==4 && length($4)!=4))
printf "%s%s",$i,(i<NF)?OFS:ORS
}
}' file.csv
Output:
"id","cty_ccy_id","cty_src","cty_nm","cty_region","cty_natnl","cty_bus_load","cty_data_load"
6,"ALL",,"AL","ALBANIA",,,,
9,"ALL",,"AQ","ANTARCTICA",,,
16,"IDR",,"AZ","AZERBAIJAN",,,,
25,"LTL",,"BJ","BENIN",,,,
26,"CVE",,"BL","SAINT BARTH�LEMY",,,,
36,,,"BW","BOTSWANA",,,,
41,"BNS",,"CF","CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC",,,,
47,"CVE",,"CL","CHILE",,,,
50,"IDR",,"CO","COLOMBIA",,,,
61,"BNS",,"DK","DENMARK",,,,
Note:
We use length($4)!=4 since we assume two characters in column 4, but we also have to add two extra characters for the double quotes..

The solution is to use a look-ahead regex, as suggested before. To reproduce your issue I used this:
"\\,\\,\\,(?=\\\"[A-Z]{2}\\\")"
which matches three commas followed by two quoted uppercase letters, but not including these in the match. Ofc you could need to adjust it a bit for your needs (ie. an arbitrary numbers of commas rather than exactly three).
But you cannot use it in Talend directly without tons of errors. Here's how to design your job:
In other words, you need to read the file line by line, no fields yet. Then, inside the tMap, do the match&replace, like:
row1.line.replaceAll("\\,\\,\\,(?=\\\"[A-Z]{2}\\\")", ",,")
and finally tokenize the line using "," as separator to get your final schema. You probably need to manually trim out the quotes here and there, since tExtractDelimitedFields won't.
Here's an output example (needs some cleaning, ofc):
You don't need to entry the schema for tExtractDelimitedFields by hand. Use the wizard to record a DelimitedFile Schema into the metadata repository, as you probably already did. You can use this schema as a Generic Schema, too, fitting it to the outgoing connection of tExtractDelimitedField. Not something the purists hang around, but it works and saves time.
About your UI problems, they are often related to file encodings and locale settings. Don't worry too much, they (usually) won't affect the job execution.
EDIT: here's a sample TOS job which shows the solution, just import in your project: TOS job archive
EDIT2: added some screenshots

Coming to the party late with a VBA based approach. An alternative way to regex is to to parse the file and remove a comma when the 4th field is empty. Using microsoft scripting runtime this can be acheived the code opens a the file then reads each line, copying it to a new temporary file. If the 4 element is empty, if it is it writes a line with the extra comma removed. The cleaned data is then copied to the origonal file and the temporary file is deleted. It seems a bit of a long way round, but it when I tested it on a file of 14000 rows based on your sample it took under 2 seconds to complete.
Sub Remove4thFieldIfEmpty()
Const iNUMBER_OF_FIELDS As Integer = 9
Dim str As String
Dim fileHandleInput As Scripting.TextStream
Dim fileHandleCleaned As Scripting.TextStream
Dim fsoObject As Scripting.FileSystemObject
Dim sPath As String
Dim sFilenameCleaned As String
Dim sFilenameInput As String
Dim vFields As Variant
Dim iCounter As Integer
Dim sNewString As String
sFilenameInput = "Regex.CSV"
sFilenameCleaned = "Cleaned.CSV"
Set fsoObject = New FileSystemObject
sPath = ThisWorkbook.Path & "\"
Set fileHandleInput = fsoObject.OpenTextFile(sPath & sFilenameInput)
If fsoObject.FileExists(sPath & sFilenameCleaned) Then
Set fileHandleCleaned = fsoObject.OpenTextFile(sPath & sFilenameCleaned, ForWriting)
Else
Set fileHandleCleaned = fsoObject.CreateTextFile((sPath & sFilenameCleaned), True)
End If
Do While Not fileHandleInput.AtEndOfStream
str = fileHandleInput.ReadLine
vFields = Split(str, ",")
If vFields(3) = "" Then
sNewString = vFields(0)
For iCounter = 1 To UBound(vFields)
If iCounter <> 3 Then sNewString = sNewString & "," & vFields(iCounter)
Next iCounter
str = sNewString
End If
fileHandleCleaned.WriteLine (str)
Loop
fileHandleInput.Close
fileHandleCleaned.Close
Set fileHandleInput = fsoObject.OpenTextFile(sPath & sFilenameInput, ForWriting)
Set fileHandleCleaned = fsoObject.OpenTextFile(sPath & sFilenameCleaned)
Do While Not fileHandleCleaned.AtEndOfStream
fileHandleInput.WriteLine (fileHandleCleaned.ReadLine)
Loop
fileHandleInput.Close
fileHandleCleaned.Close
Set fileHandleCleaned = Nothing
Set fileHandleInput = Nothing
KillFile (sPath & sFilenameCleaned)
Set fsoObject = Nothing
End Sub

If that's the only problem (and if you never have a comma in the field bt_cty_ccy_id), then you could remove such an extra comma by loading your file into an editor that supports regexes and have it replace
^([^,]*,[^,]*,[^,]*,),(?="[A-Z]{2}")
with \1.

i would question the source system which is sending you this file as to why this extra comma in between for some rows? I guess you would be using comma as a delimeter for importing this .csv file into talend.
(or another suggestion would be to ask for semi colon as column separator in the input file)
9,"ALL",,,"AQ","ANTARCTICA",,,,
will be
9;"ALL";,;"AQ";"ANTARCTICA";;;;

.NET find .xls or.xlsx file with GetFiles using wildcard? example: .xls*

I need to find an Excel file. However, the extension of the file I"m looking for could be .xls or .xlsx. I was considering using FileExists but I can't use a wildcard with that. Here's my attempt at using GetFiles, however, the .xls* part of my code does not work. I've never used GetFiles before, can anyone give me some guidance on what I'm doing wrong?
Dim InputFormPath As String = "W:\TOM\ERIC\NET Dev\"
Dim wbNameXLSInputForm As String = StatVar.xlApp.Sheets("New Calculator Input").Range("D15").Text & ".xls*"
Dim XLSInputForm As String = wbNameXLSInputForm
Dim dirs As String() = Directory.GetFiles(InputFormPath, wbNameXLSInputForm)
If dirs.Length <> 0 Then
'do something
End If

Take a look at this documentation. It says: The following list shows the behavior of different lengths for the searchPattern parameter: "*.abc" returns files having an extension of.abc,.abcd,.abcde,.abcdef, and so on.

VB.net will not read text file correctly

I've been trying to use StreamReader to read a log file. I cannot verify what it is encoded in, as when I open it in notepad++ and select ANSI encoding, I get this result:
I'm getting the characters needed when using ANSI but they are followed by things like [NULL][EOT][SOH][NUL][SI]
When I try and read the file in VB (using StreamReader or ReadAll) with ANSI encoding selected the resulting string I get back is completely wrong.
How could I read a file like this in VB.net?

You could use the IO.File.ReadAllText("File Location", encoding as System.Text.Encoding) method,
Dim textFromFile as string = IO.File.ReadAllText("C:\Users\Jason\Desktop\login20130417.rdb", System.Text.Encoding.ASCII) 'Or Unicode, UFT32, UFT8, UFT7, BigEndianUnicode or default. Default is ANSI.
If you still don't get the text you need by using the default encoding (ANSI), then you can always try the other 6 different encoding methods.
Update...
It appears that your file is corrupt, using the code below I was able to get a binary representation of whatever is in the file, I got this,
1111111111111101000001110000010000000000000001010000000000010011000000000000100000000000000111100000000000100110000000000011100000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000110000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000111111111111110100000111000001000000000000000101000000000001001100000000000010000000000000011110000000000010100000000000111111111111110100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000110011100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
The massive amount of null data would suggest that the file is corrupt, which would also explain why we are not getting a lot of data whenever we try to read the file.
The code,
Dim fileData As String = IO.File.ReadAllText("C:\Users\Jason\Desktop\login20130417.rdb")
Dim i As Integer = 0
Dim binaryData As String = ""
Dim ch As String = ""
Do Until i = fileData.Length
ch = fileData.Chars(i)
bin = bin & System.Convert.ToString(AscW(ch), 2).PadLeft(8, "0")
i = i + 1
Loop

As #Daniel A. White suggested in his comment, that file does not appear to be encoded like a "normal" text file. A StreamReader will not work in this situation. I would attempt to use a BinaryReader.

Rdb file? Never heard of it. Quick google makes it less clear - n64 database file, Darkbot, etc...
However considering the name you have, and the general look of the opened file, i would say its a binary file.
If you want to read the file in vb.net you'll need a library of sorts, and i can't help you with one until you are able to shed some light on what the file may be, or what it was created with.