Best way to read Tab-delimited text file

[Daniel EXBN]

Hi!

I need to read a text file which has ~10K lines
each line has 7 or 10 rows
each row is separated by TAB

the text file contains some lines which start with "//" and there is no need to store this specific lines.

there is another condition:
case column contains 1 char only and it is 0 or 1 or 2 or 3 or 4, then this will determine the next column's rows count.
if char is 0, 2 or 4 then all next column's row count is 7.
if char is 1 or 3 then all next column's row count is 7.
the row count will change only if there is "end" in the next line.

Also, each multi-row columns' last row is string

- i will need to store all values of all columns and rows in accesible location and i will need to give them names to know where to access to.
e.g. data.positionX and data.positionY are two separate values that exist in every multi-row column

Text file example:

//blabla
//bla
1
2    55    69    14    10    200    //LineDescription
end
 
3
2    55    69    14    10    200    55    199    22    //LineDescription
end
 

So, What is the best method to read this file?
Also, can you give me general direction of how to manage to read it?


Thanks in advance!

[xc0de]

You should check out "http://filehelpers.sourceforge.net/"

[PsychoCoder]

If you're using C# here's an example of reading a delimited file and storing it in a List<String>.

NOTE: If using VB.NET the conversion is very simple

public static List<string> ReadDelimitedFile(string docPath)
{
    var sepList = new List<string>();
 
    // Read the file and display it line by line.
    using (var file = new StreamReader(docPath))
    {
        string line;
        while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
        {
            var delimiters = new char[] { '\t' };
            var segments = line.Split(delimiters, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
 
            foreach (var segment in segments)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(segment);
                sepList.Add(segment);
            }
        }
 
        file.Close();
    }
    // Suspend the screen.
    Console.ReadLine();
 
    return sepList;
}
 

Hope it can help