Question

I have the following struct:

    public struct StudentDetails
    {
        public string unitCode; //eg CSC10208
        public string unitNumber; //unique identifier
        public string firstName; //first name
        public string lastName;// last or family name
        public int studentMark; //student mark
    }

Using that struct I wrote data into a sequential file. The data in the file is as follow:

ABC123
1
John
Doe
95
DCE433
3
Sherlock
Holmes
100
ASD768
5
Chuck
Norris
101

etc.

What’s the best way to read the data from that file and load it into an array of structs?

Answer 1

Assuming your file is one value per line:

List<StudentDetails> studentList = new List<StudentDetails>();

using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(@"filename"))
{

    while (!sr.EndOfStream)
    {
        StudentDetails student;

        student.unitCode = sr.ReadLine();
        student.unitNumber = sr.ReadLine();
        student.firstName = sr.ReadLine();
        student.lastName = sr.ReadLine();
        student.studentMark = Convert.ToInt32(sr.ReadLine());

        studentList.Add(student);
    }

    StudentDetail[] studentArray = studentList.ToArray();

}

Note that this is not very robust – if there are not 5 lines for each student, you’ll run into problems, or if the last student has less than 5 lines.

EDIT

Taking the lessons learned from your previous question Array of structs in C# regarding the need to override ToString() in your struct, the following might help to resolve your issue with printing the values:

In StudentDetails struct (taken from Nick Bradley’s answer):

public override string ToString()
{
    return string.Format("{0}, {1}, {2}, {3}, {4}", unitCode,
           unitNumber, firstName, lastName, studentMark);
}

Then you could simply loop through the array:

for (int i = 0; i < studentArray.Length; i++)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Student #{0}:", i);
    Console.WriteLine(studentArray[i]);
    Console.WriteLine();
}