Text File Indexing

[miben]

I have a file that is of arround 250,000 records long. Currently, I do
a simple forward only search on a record column to find the record and
return the record if found. If the record is at the bottom of the
file, it takes near 5 seconds to complete. I know if the data was in a
database, placing an index on that column is what I need to do. Is
there a way to index a column from a text file of records?

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Hi,

AFAIK, No

That is the starting reason why there are made databases

Cor

[miben]

cute, but unfortunately im not using a database am i? sql server is
faster then access, so if there is an access problem are you telling me
to just go get sql server? anyways...

I am going to try to load the column into memory that I want and place
it into an ArrayList to see if I can use the IndexOf method to do the
searches fatser. Then call up that row in the text file on results.
The initiaial Open method will suffer to load up the records, but the
file needs to be searched alot so this should help a little.

I am not worried about file contents changing while it is opened.

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Miben,

You can read in your records in a datatable. Than you have inside memory the
same methods as if it was a database see this kind of pseudo code bellow

dim dt as new datatable
dt.columns.add("Mycolumn1,gettype(system.string))
etc.

While the streamreader is reading
read record
dim dr as datarow = dt.newrow
dr(1) = item1
dr(2) = item2
dt.rows.add(dr)
loop

And than you can use that datatable.

I hope this help

Cor