Splitting up a string

[Opettaja]

I am new to c# and I am currently trying to make a program to retrieve
Battlefield 2 game stats from the gamespy servers. I have got it so I
can retrieve the data but I do not know how to cut up the data to
assign each value to its own variable. So right now I am just saving
the data to a txt file and when I look in the text file all the data is
there.

Not sure if this matters but when I open the text file in Word pad
(Rich Text) It shows something like this.

ŽO
H D
asof 1133092198
H D
pid 43974309
nick Opettaja
scor 1459
jond 1118881320
wins 28
loss 47
.....
.....

But when I open it in notepad (Raw Text) Everything is on one line with
squares indicating linebreaks.

So if anyone has any suggestions on how I can break up each line into
its own variable that would be greatly appreciated. And sorry If im a
little vague on information, I am new to c# and still learning, If you
need more information just let me know.

Thanks.

[Danny Tuppeny]

"Opettaja" <op******@gmail .com> wrote in message
news:11******** **************@ g14g2000cwa.goo glegroups.com.. .
<snip>

So if anyone has any suggestions on how I can break up each line into
its own variable that would be greatly appreciated. And sorry If im a
little vague on information, I am new to c# and still learning, If you
need more information just let me know.

This might be helpful:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...xtFromFile.asp

It reads the file a line at a time. The problem with Notepad is probably
down to the difference in linefeeds/carraige returns on *nix/Windows. It
might be that the file includes \r or \n rather than both. There's probably
a way to configure what the above code uses as as a line end.

HTH

[Bob Grommes]

Simply determine, with a hex editor if need be, what the field delimiter
and end of line characters are. I suspect you'll find that they are
tabs and line feeds, respectively.

Once you determine what delimits each field then you can use the
String.Split() method to break the fields up into an array. Read one
line, break that line into fields, process as desired, and repeat until
done.

--Bob

Opettaja wrote:

I am new to c# and I am currently trying to make a program to retrieve
Battlefield 2 game stats from the gamespy servers. I have got it so I
can retrieve the data but I do not know how to cut up the data to
assign each value to its own variable. So right now I am just saving
the data to a txt file and when I look in the text file all the data is
there.

Not sure if this matters but when I open the text file in Word pad
(Rich Text) It shows something like this.

ŽO
H D
asof 1133092198
H D
pid 43974309
nick Opettaja
scor 1459
jond 1118881320
wins 28
loss 47
....
....

But when I open it in notepad (Raw Text) Everything is on one line with
squares indicating linebreaks.

So if anyone has any suggestions on how I can break up each line into
its own variable that would be greatly appreciated. And sorry If im a
little vague on information, I am new to c# and still learning, If you
need more information just let me know.

Thanks.

[Opettaja]

Okay I got the lines split up into individual lines, but now how do I
split up the individual lines into 2 variables using Split and spliting
by just spaces. Here is what I have right now

string[] lines = reader.ReadStri ng().Split(new Char[] {'\r','\n'});

for (int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++)
{
string[] output = lines[i].Split(new Char[]{' '});
listBox1.Items. Add(output[1]);
}

What do I put in the Char{' '} to make it split by the spaces?

[Bob Grommes]

If spaces are in fact the delimiter then what you have is fine. You
want a character array of characters to split on, and {' '} creates an
array of one character, the space.

Be aware that if there are multiple spaces on a line then you'll get
more than two fields. For example:

Foo Bar
Fu Bar

On the Foo line there are two spaces between Foo and Bar. On the 2nd
line there are three spaces. Splitting on a space will give you three
strings from the first line ("Foo", "", and "Bar") and four strings from
the second line ("Fu","","" and "Bar").

You can either account for this in your parsing of the array or
normalize the whole line before splitting, by removing adjacent spaces,
along the lines of:

while (theLine.IndexO f(" ") > -1) {
theLine = theLine.Replace (" "," ");
}

--Bob

Opettaja wrote:

Okay I got the lines split up into individual lines, but now how do I
split up the individual lines into 2 variables using Split and spliting
by just spaces. Here is what I have right now

string[] lines = reader.ReadStri ng().Split(new Char[] {'\r','\n'});

for (int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++)
{
string[] output = lines[i].Split(new Char[]{' '});
listBox1.Items. Add(output[1]);
}

What do I put in the Char{' '} to make it split by the spaces?

[jeremiah johnson]

if anyone wants to use regular expressions, i can offer up a solution,
but every time i post a solution using regular expressions, i get beaten
up for it. when i say 'beaten up' i mean to say that the replies are
often similar to 'regular expressions are hard to read, avoid them' and
'that's bad style'.

well i'm friggin' sorry but i grew up on Perl and regular expressions
are second nature to me.

yes i'm bitter.

*goes away*

Bob Grommes wrote:

If spaces are in fact the delimiter then what you have is fine. You
want a character array of characters to split on, and {' '} creates an
array of one character, the space.

Be aware that if there are multiple spaces on a line then you'll get
more than two fields. For example:

Foo Bar
Fu Bar

On the Foo line there are two spaces between Foo and Bar. On the 2nd
line there are three spaces. Splitting on a space will give you three
strings from the first line ("Foo", "", and "Bar") and four strings from
the second line ("Fu","","" and "Bar").

You can either account for this in your parsing of the array or
normalize the whole line before splitting, by removing adjacent spaces,
along the lines of:

while (theLine.IndexO f(" ") > -1) {
theLine = theLine.Replace (" "," ");
}

--Bob

Opettaja wrote:

Okay I got the lines split up into individual lines, but now how do I
split up the individual lines into 2 variables using Split and spliting
by just spaces. Here is what I have right now

string[] lines = reader.ReadStri ng().Split(new Char[] {'\r','\n'});

for (int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++)
{
string[] output = lines[i].Split(new Char[]{' '});
listBox1.Items. Add(output[1]);
}

What do I put in the Char{' '} to make it split by the spaces?

[Simon]

lol .. sorry for the "off topic" reply but, just wanted to let you know
that at 3:27 am in the middle of a tedious debugging session, you gave
me a giggle.

BTW, I totally agree. Regular expressions are like everything if you
haven't seen them before. They're not so bad once you get used to them.
They can be overkill in some situations, but in others they are by far
the best way.

Oh and if anyone is going to beat up JJ and thinks I'm guilty by
association, I wasn't here.

*tip toes away*
jeremiah johnson wrote:

if anyone wants to use regular expressions, i can offer up a solution,
but every time i post a solution using regular expressions, i get beaten
up for it. when i say 'beaten up' i mean to say that the replies are
often similar to 'regular expressions are hard to read, avoid them' and
'that's bad style'.

well i'm friggin' sorry but i grew up on Perl and regular expressions
are second nature to me.

yes i'm bitter.

*goes away*

Bob Grommes wrote:

If spaces are in fact the delimiter then what you have is fine. You
want a character array of characters to split on, and {' '} creates an
array of one character, the space.

Be aware that if there are multiple spaces on a line then you'll get
more than two fields. For example:

Foo Bar
Fu Bar

On the Foo line there are two spaces between Foo and Bar. On the 2nd
line there are three spaces. Splitting on a space will give you three
strings from the first line ("Foo", "", and "Bar") and four strings
from the second line ("Fu","","" and "Bar").

You can either account for this in your parsing of the array or
normalize the whole line before splitting, by removing adjacent
spaces, along the lines of:

while (theLine.IndexO f(" ") > -1) {
theLine = theLine.Replace (" "," ");
}

--Bob

Opettaja wrote:

Okay I got the lines split up into individual lines, but now how do I
split up the individual lines into 2 variables using Split and spliting
by just spaces. Here is what I have right now

string[] lines = reader.ReadStri ng().Split(new Char[] {'\r','\n'});

for (int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++)
{
string[] output = lines[i].Split(new Char[]{' '});
listBox1.Items. Add(output[1]);
}

What do I put in the Char{' '} to make it split by the spaces?

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Simon wrote:

lol .. sorry for the "off topic" reply but, just wanted to let you know
that at 3:27 am in the middle of a tedious debugging session, you gave
me a giggle.

BTW, I totally agree. Regular expressions are like everything if you
haven't seen them before. They're not so bad once you get used to them.
They can be overkill in some situations, but in others they are by far
the best way.

The trouble is that they're overkill in *many, many* situations - but
some people use them as the "default" way of performing string
manipulation.

If you want to operate on pattern, they're great. If you just want to
perform a simple replacement, or matching of an exact string, then
they're not only overkill, but they're *risky* overkill. You have to
remember all the characters which need escaping, etc. Furthermore, you
have to hope that maintenance engineers will remember those characters
too.

Want to find out whether one string starts with another? Use
String.StartsWi th.
Want to replace one (exact) string with another within a third? Using
String.Replace.
Want to match or replace patterns? Use Regex.

A lot of things are "not so bad once you get used to them" - but that
doesn't mean they're the best solution to the problem. I'm sure if you
work at it hard enough, you can become quite proficient at banging in
nails with a screwdriver - that doesn't mean it's a better tool than a
hammer for that particular task though.

Jon

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Simon wrote:

lol .. sorry for the "off topic" reply but, just wanted to let you know
that at 3:27 am in the middle of a tedious debugging session, you gave
me a giggle.

BTW, I totally agree. Regular expressions are like everything if you
haven't seen them before. They're not so bad once you get used to them.
They can be overkill in some situations, but in others they are by far
the best way.

Oh and if anyone is going to beat up JJ and thinks I'm guilty by
association, I wasn't here.

As an addendum to my previous post - I was one of the people who "beat
up" JJ last time he suggested using a regular expression. It's an
example which demonstrates my point very well. Here's the code he
suggested:

if you're able to loop through the records in the very large files,
skip
processing when you see that the record you're on starts with "***".

using System.Text.Reg ularExpressions ;
....

foreach (string s in records) { // example code
Match m = Regex.Match(s, "^***");
if (m.Success) { // this is a header or footer
[...]

Now, JJ, who claims that regular expressions are "second nature" to him
got the regular expression wrong. The correct expression, as specified
by Greg Bacon, is @"^\*\*\*". Compare the solution which uses regular
expressions with my suggested solution:

if (s.StartsWith(" ***"))

Which one is easier to write? Well, JJ got the regex version wrong on
his first attempt. I somehow doubt that my version fails.

Which one is easier to read? Well, if you read my version out loud, it
says *exactly* what it's doing. The same can certainly *not* be said
for the regular expression version.

Is it any wonder that I think JJ's being a little over-zealous with his
use of regular expressions?

Jon

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

jeremiah johnson wrote:

if anyone wants to use regular expressions, i can offer up a solution,
but every time i post a solution using regular expressions, i get beaten
up for it. when i say 'beaten up' i mean to say that the replies are
often similar to 'regular expressions are hard to read, avoid them' and
'that's bad style'.

It's bad style to use them when they're unnecessary and are a more
complex solution to the problem than another one. If you look at the
recent thread which talked about finding lines which start with "***",
you'll see a much simpler solution than your suggested regular
expression - and one which, somewhat importantly, *works*.

In this case, however, I believe they're absolutely the right tool for
the job, because an actual pattern is involved. Personally I'd probably
read the file line by line, and then split each line with a regular
expression. The regular expression involved would be pretty simple at
that stage.

Jon