Question

I am reading a text file and I need to replace a few areas with new text that I marked with {0}, {1}, {2}, {3}, {4}, {5}, {6}.

So I load in the text, save it to a string variable, and then use String.Replace but it’s not working.

        For i As Integer = 0 To 6
            fileText.Replace("{" & i & "}", DisplayStudentData(i))
        Next

And DisplayStudentData looks like this:

        Protected Function DisplayStudentData(ByVal itemNumber As Integer) As String

        Dim dsItem As String = ""
        If itemNumber <> -1 Then
            Select Case itemNumber
                Case 0
                    dsItem = "testFirstName"
                Case 1
                    dsItem = "testTitle"
                Case 2
                    dsItem = "testClass"
                Case 3
                    dsItem = "testTeacher"
                Case 4
                    dsItem = "testDept"
                Case 5
                    dsItem = "testEmail"
                Case 6
                    dsItem = "testPhone"
            End Select
        End If
        Return dsItem
    End Function

It seems like the above should work, but it doesn’t.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

---

Ok I figured it out…

I put all the data items into an array, then did this after loading the text file:

            fileText = String.Format(fileText, dArr(0), dArr(1), dArr(2), dArr(3), dArr(4), dArr(5), dArr(6))

Is this a good way of doing it?

Answer 1

fileText = fileText.Replace("{" & i & "}", DisplayStudentData(i))

Replace returns a new string. It does not modify the string from which it was called.

You could also do this:

fileText = String.Format(fileText, Enumerable.Range(0,7).Select(Function(i) DisplayStudentData(i)).ToArray())

Why isn’t DisplayStudentData just an array in the first place (which would make string.Format() even easier)?