Question

I’m currently busy coding a hangman game in VB.NET.
As a wordlist, I have a textfile containing 1520 words, each one seperated by a new line…

The best I could think of to get a random word is with a Randomize() function.
Then getting the word from the line # which was randomly generated.

Only to find out just now, that this method:

Using parser As New Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser_
("filepath")
        parser.TextFieldType = FileIO.FieldType.Delimited

doesn’t allow me to use a new line as a delimiter…

Considering all words have different lengths/widths, I can’t use this either:

parser.TextFieldType = FileIO.FieldType.FixedWidth

Is there any better way for me to extract the word from that random line?

If not, what would be the delimiter I should use for this and how do I quickly change the breaklines into that new delimiter without resorting to Office?

Also, how can I use the textfieldparser to get the file from resources?
When I tried using
my.resources.filename
instead of “filepath”, it gave me an ArgumentException due to “invalid characters in the path”.

Answer 1

The easier way is to load your text file into a string collection, then grab the random index of the collection

Dim list As New List(Of String)
Dim Reader As New StreamReader("C:\WordList.txt")
Dim line As String

Do
    line = Reader.ReadLine()
    list.Add(line)
Loop Until line Is Nothing

Reader.Close()