Do I have streamreader coded correctly here?

[Fuzz13]

I'm writing a program that asks a user to navigate to a file (.txt or .csv) load that file into memory then streamreader reads through the file to end and every time it hits a carriage return "\n" or a comma "," it should count it as a new line. For every line it should populate an array so object 1 is line 1, object 2 is line 2 etc.

This is the code that was working at one point but I believe to now be giving me issues:

 string[] lines = null; //create lines array
 
             using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(@newobject.csvDirectory))
             {
                 string fileContents = sr.ReadToEnd();
                 lines = fileContents.Split(new char[] { ',' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
             }
 

After the file is read into the array I later go on to create files based off of the objects of the array using this line:

string filename = lines[i] + ".txt";
 
string newFile = System.IO.Path.Combine(directoryofparentfolder, fileName);
 
system.IO.file.create(@newFile);
 
 

If the file selected has only 1 line of text within it (and no illegal characters including commas) the program will run fine and create a file based off that line of text. If the file has multiple lines of text (and no illegal characters including commas), Visual Studio will give an error saying there are illegal characters and can't continue. I know the create file code works so I imagine it's how the file is being read into the array though I'm not positive.

Thanks to anyone who takes a look.

[Aimee Bailey]

Im not trying to be daft, but im not sure you deal with the carrage returns in that code you provided, in that case:

somepath\myfilename.txt
 

would become

somepath\myfilename
.txt
 

Also, \n is not the only carrage return you may encounter. take into account \r also. Between line 5 and 6, id suggest something like:

fileContents = fileContents.Replace("\r", ",").Replace("\n", ",");
 

If it still gives you grief, post back ok :)

Aimee.

[Fuzz13]

If my understanding of my original code is correct what is happening is I'm instantiating an array "lines" and then reading the file "newobject.csvdirectory" which has the directory of a chosen file stored there. When it reads the file using the readtoend method it then looks for commas and splits the text on them, removing the comma and inserting a carriage return. So I don't believe I need to do the replace here though I appreciate the suggestion. Any others?

[Christian Binder]

Your code doesn't replace commas with newlines, it only splits your string into pieces.
e.g. the file content would look like this

AAA, BBB
CCC
DDD
 

the content of string[] lines would be the following:
lines[0]: "AAA"
lines[1]: "BBB
CCC
DDD"
(The new-lines won't be omitted as AmzBee stated correctly)

I'd suggest that you use System.IO.File.ReadAllLines()-method. This would return an array with entries for each line in your file.
Then you've to iterate over each array entry and check it for commas.

You could also define mor split-parameters.

string[] lines = null; //create lines array
 
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(@newobject.csvDirectory))
{
  string fileContents = sr.ReadToEnd();
  lines = fileContents.Split(new string[] { ",", Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
//splitting by commas and newlines
}
 

[Fuzz13]

ChBinder, that was exactly what I needed! I have been misunderstanding everyone about the \n, \r thing. I never realized that just because I don't see those characters in my text file it doesn't mean they don't exist as a command in the file. Thank you for your additional split command it worked perfectly. Now on to my next bug :)