Question

Reading a text file with VB6

Asked by: dominica526

Hello Experts,

I have a report that is generated from a third party application as a text file. I need to read and obtain some specific information contained in this text file. I need the filenames that the report contains so that  I can store in a variable to be used later in my application. Here is a sample report:

02/03/04     Report : BLB List Report     16:38:19


** Image library: 04034E02.BLB
        23 documents of type BCKSCN
** Image library: 04034A08.BLB
        82 documents of type 7070

The lines will always be in the same place and the files will always be in the same place. I know how to open a text file and read each line. What I don't know is how to take only the part of the line that I need. Here is my code:

If oFso.FileExists(App.path & "\blbreport.txt") Then
    Set ts = fso.OpenTextFile(App.path & "\ blbreport.txt", 1, False)
          While Not ts.AtEndOfStream
Line1 = ts.ReadLine
Line2 = ts.ReadLine
Line3 = ts.ReadLine
Line4 = ts.ReadLine
Line5 = ts.ReadLine
Line6 = ts.ReadLine
Line7 = ts.ReadLine

          Wend
          ts.Close
        Set ts = Nothing
      End If
    Set fso = Nothing


I would like to clean the lines and just get the filenames.

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Asked On
2004-12-20 at 19:17:39ID21249291
Tags

file

,

text

,

vb6

,

read

Topic

VB Controls

Participating Experts
2
Points
400
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: HoweverCommaPosted on 2004-12-20 at 19:27:35ID: 12872831

LineData = "** Image library: 04034E02.BLB"
FileName = Mid(LineData, InStr(LineData, ":") + 2)
MsgBox (FileName)

 

by: HoweverCommaPosted on 2004-12-20 at 19:29:29ID: 12872841

BTW, If the length of the MID function is not specified it will retrun th eremainder of the string.
It just finds the : moves 2 positions to the forst part of the filename and returns it.

 

by: dominica526Posted on 2004-12-20 at 20:00:50ID: 12872965

Okay that really works well, but could you explain in better detail what I'm doing so the I can use it on other lines. What does MID do and what does InStr do?

 

by: HoweverCommaPosted on 2004-12-20 at 20:13:57ID: 12873029

Well I thought my update explained mid.

Here you go.
The Mid Funtion Takes this format Mid (String, StartPos, Length)
The Instr takes this format Instr(StartPos, String, String to find) and it returns the first position of the found string, 0 if failure)


So Mid(LineData, InStr(LineData, ":") + 2)
gives  Mid(LineData, 17 + 2)   ' 17 is the position of the : char we want to skip it and the space so add 2 that is the start positionj of the string to be returned
Since no length was specified it gets the rest.   Mid(LineData, 19,8) would return the filename w/o the extension.

You need to put it in a function like this....

Function ParseFileName (LineData As String) As String
ParseFileName=""
If InStr(LineDate,":") Then ParseFileName=Mid(LineData, InStr(LineData, ":") + 2)    ' The InStr here will skip the XX documents lines
End Function

Then just pass it each line read from the report.




 

by: jmonwPosted on 2005-06-23 at 17:38:48ID: 14290195

Just as a nitpick, it's better to use the Mid$ function, as this returns a string rather than a variant.  But other than that, HoweverComma's right.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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