Question

I’m running three counters, one to return the total amount of chars, one to return the number of ‘|’ chars in my .txt file (total). And one to read how many separate lines are in my text file. I’m assuming my counters are wrong, I’m not sure. In my text file there are some extra ‘|’ chars, but that is a bug I need to fix later…

The Message Boxes show  
"Lines = 8"   
"Entries = 8"   
"Total Chars = 0"  

Not sure if it helps but the .txt file is compiled using a streamwriter, and I have a datagridview saved to a string to create the output. Everything seems okay with those functions.

Here is a copy of the text file I’m reading

Matthew|Walker|MXW320|114282353|True|True|True  
Audrey|Walker|AXW420|114282354|True|True|True    
John|Doe|JXD020|111222333|True|True|False  
||||||  

And here is the code.

    private void btnLoadList_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        var loadDialog = new OpenFileDialog
            {
                InitialDirectory = Convert.ToString(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments),
                Filter = "Text (*.txt)|*.txt",
                FilterIndex = 1
            };
        if (loadDialog.ShowDialog() != DialogResult.OK) return;
        using (new StreamReader(loadDialog.FileName))
        {
            var lines = File.ReadAllLines(loadDialog.FileName);//Array of all the lines in the text file
            foreach (var assocStringer in lines)//For each assocStringer in lines (Runs 1 cycle for each line in the text file loaded)
            {
                var entries = assocStringer.Split('|'); // split the line into pieces (e.g. an array of "Matthew", "Walker", etc.)
                var obj = (Associate) _bindingSource.AddNew();
                if (obj == null) continue;
                obj.FirstName = entries[0];
                obj.LastName = entries[1];
                obj.AssocId = entries[2];
                obj.AssocRfid = entries[3];
                obj.CanDoDiverts = entries[4];
                obj.CanDoMhe = entries[5];
                obj.CanDoLoading = entries[6];
            } 
      }
   }

Hope you guys find the bug(s) here. Sorry if the formatting is sloppy I’m self-taught, no classes. Any extra advice is welcomed, be as honest and harsh as need be, no feelings will be hurt.

In summary

Why is this program not reading the correct values from the text file I’m using?

Answer 1

Not totally sure I get exactly what you’re trying to do, so correct me if I’m off, but if you’re just trying to get the line count, pipe (|) count and character count for the file the following should get you that.

var lines = File.ReadAllLines(load_dialog.FileName);
int lineCount = lines.Count();
int totalChars = 0;
int totalPipes = 0; // number of "|" chars

foreach (var s in lines)
{
    var entries = s.Split('|');  // split the line into pieces (e.g. an array of "Matthew", "Walker", etc.)
    totalChars += s.Length;   // add the number of chars on this line to the total
    totalPipes = totalPipes + entries.Count() - 1; // there is always one more entry than pipes
}

All the Split() is doing is breaking the full line into an array of the individual fields in the string. Since you only seem to care about the number of pipes and not the fields, I’m not doing much with it other than determining the number of pipes by taking the number of fields and subtracting one (since you don’t have a trailing pipe on each line).