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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T21:11:40+00:00

I’m trying to read in a text file in a c# application, but I

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I’m trying to read in a text file in a c# application, but I don’t want to read the first two lines, or the last line. There’s 8 lines in the file, so effectivly I just want to read in lines, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.
Is there any way to do this?

example file

_USE [Shelley's Other Database]  
CREATE TABLE db.exmpcustomers(  
fName varchar(100) NULL,  
lName varchar(100) NULL,  
dateOfBirth date NULL,  
houseNumber int NULL,  
streetName varchar(100) NULL  
) ON [PRIMARY]_

EDIT

Okay, so, I’ve implemented Callum Rogers answer into my code and for some reason it works with my edited text file (I created a text file with the lines I didn’t want to use omitted) and it does exactly what it should, but whenever I try it with the original text file (above) it throws an exception. I display this information in a DataGrid and I think that’s where the exception is being thrown.

Any ideas?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Why do you want to ignore exactly the first two and the last line?

    Depending on what your file looks like you might want to analyze the line, e.g. look at the first character whether it is a comment sign, or ignore everything until you find the first empty line, etc.

    Sometimes, hardcoding “magic” numbers isn’t such a good idea. What if the file format needs to be changed to contain 3 header lines?

    As the other answers demonstrate: Nothing keeps you from doing what you ever want with a line you have read, so of course, you can ignore it, too.

    Edit, now that you’ve provided an example of your file: For your case I’d definitely not use the hardcoded numbers approach. What if some day the SQL statement should contain another field, or if it appears on one instead of 8 lines?

    My suggestion: Read in the whole string at once, then analyze it. Safest way would be to use a grammar, but if you presume the SQL statement is never going to be more complicated, you can use a regular expression (still much better than using line numbers etc.):

    string content = File.ReadAllText(filename);
Regex r = new Regex(@"CREATE TABLE [^\(]+\((.*)\) ON");
string whatYouWant = r.Match(content).Groups[0].Value;
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