asked on

vb.net count characters then add a symbol

I am using visual basic and I want to know how I can count so many characters and then add a certain symbol

example that I have is:

L20Tom Brady 12340golf

It needs to be when the code sees the line that starts with L to
make the line look lke this

L:20:Tom:Brady:12340:Golf

Now the line data will never be the same but it will have the same fixed length. The L will be the identifier to signal to do the above,

So
where 20 is would be 2 characters
Tom = 4 five characters
Brady = 10 characters
12340 = 5 chars
Golf= 4 chars

so lets say the next line would be

L40JimmyBrad 123 base

it would do this to the line

L:40:Jimmy:Brad:123:base

striping out the empty spaces.

Is this hard to do????

Arthur_Wood

do I understand you correctly that whent the FIRST CHARACTER is a 'L' the line will ALWAYS be laid out as

1 Character
2 DIGITS
5 Characters (may have trailing blanks)
10 Characters (may have trailing blanks)
5 Digits
4 characters

Is that correct?

AW

hogan9111

ASKER

yes the L will never change

Arthur_Wood

and are the other character counts ALWAYS the same

2 characters ('20' in your example) followed by
5 Characters ('Tom ' or 'Jimmy' in you examples) foloowed by
10 Characters ('Brady ' or 'Brad ' in your examples) followed by
5 Characters ('12340' in your example) followed by
4 characteres ('golf' or 'base' in your examples)

AW

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Arthur_Wood

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Shahankit

Dim mainLine as string = "L40JimmyBrad 123 base "

Dim temp As String
Dim temp1 As String
Dim temp2 As String
Dim temp3 As String
Dim temp4 As String
Dim temp5 As String

temp = mainLine.Substring(0, 1)
temp1 = mainLine.Substring(2, 4)
temp2 = mainLine.Substring(5, 10)
temp3 = mainLine.Substring(11, 21)
temp4 = mainLine.Substring(22, 27)
temp5 = mainLine.Substring(28, 32)

Dim position1 As Int16 = temp1.IndexOf(" ")
Dim position2 As Int16 = temp2.IndexOf(" ")
Dim position3 As Int16 = temp3.IndexOf(" ")
Dim position4 As Int16 = temp4.IndexOf(" ")
Dim position5 As Int16 = temp5.IndexOf(" ")

If position1> 0 Then
temp1 = temp1.substring(0,position1)
End If
If position2> 0 Then
temp2 = temp2.substring(0,position2)
End If
If position3> 0 Then
temp3 = temp3.substring(0,position3)
End If
If position4> 0 Then
temp4 = temp4.substring(0,position4)
End If
If position5> 0 Then
temp5 = temp5.substring(0,position5)
End If

Dim resultline as string = temp + ":" + temp1 + ":" + temp2 + ":" + temp3 + ":" + temp4 + ":" + temp5

It might not be the best way to solve this problem... but still this will give you resulting string as you want

Best of luck
Ankit

hogan9111

ASKER

one question though: what is this line actually doing??

StrResult = StrResult.Substring(0, StrResult.Length - 1)

Arthur_Wood

in the loop, I append a ":" after each substring, so this last statement drops the ":" which would have appeared after the LAST block. It takes the Substring the starts at the first character and extends to the next to last character (Length - 1)

AW