search inside a file?

[Raed Abu-Sanad]

hi,,
assume i have a text file with many lines of information.
how can i search the file for characters.
e.g. I want to find 2222 which is part of SEARCHID2222
??

hints plz?
thanks

[Jim Padgett]

Binary ?

Open the file in binary mode to a string, the search the string with instr ....

[Raed Abu-Sanad]

Open the file in binary mode to a string, the search the string with instr ....

thanks
but INSTR gives the first occurrence of the character. If i need to look for second occurrence,i have to save the position and start searching again starting from the saved position again?? or there is another method?

thanks

[Rodney Hicks]

Try the TALLY function instead of the INSTR.

[Paul Squires]

but INSTR gives the first occurrence of the character. If i need to look for second occurrence,i have to save the position and start searching again starting from the saved position again?? or there is another method?

That's about right. Search for the string using InStr and if found then increment your starting search offet by the length of the search string. Something like (not tested, this is straight from my brain):

nBufferSize = Len(sBuffer)
nOffSet = 1

Do Until nOffSet > nBufferSize

   f = InStr( nOffset, sBuffer, sSearchString )
   If f Then
      ' You've found a match... do what you want to do here

      ' increment the offset to keep searching from
      nOffSet = f + Len(sSearchString)
   Else
      Exit Do
   End If

Loop

[Chris Holbrook]

If it is a text file, then quite possibly you will want to know some other contents of the line containing the target data, and/or the line number, as well as its absolute position within the file.

So having loaded the file into a single string, you can use PARSE$ to transform it into a string array, then either search each string in the array, or having established the target position in the single string, subtract the lengths of each string in the array until the line number is known. If the line number is not required, then the text in which the target occurs can be extracted by winding backwards and forwards from the target position to the nearest line delimiter ($CRLF, probably), or to the limits of the string.

[John Petty]

Chris is correct the various PARSE functions and statements are probably the fastest depending on what you are trying to determine. Here is a very simple example (appologies for the simple variable names). I suspect PARSECOUNT and TALLY from Rodney are basically the same code except PARSECOUNT adds 1 to the count

#COMPILE EXE

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG

    f& = FREEFILE
    OPEN "textfile" FOR BINARY AS f&
    GET$ f$, LOF(f&), t$    'convert the whole file to a single string t$
    c& = PARSECOUNT(t$, "2222") 'returns the number of occurances plus 1
    REDIM ta(1 TO c&) AS STRING
    PARSE t$, ta$(), "2222" 'will give an array of strings broken by each
    'occurance of 2222 with the 2222 actualy removed
    'Note the reason the count is plus 1 is because the last count will be for
    ' the remainder of the string or an empty string if the file ennded with 2222

END FUNCTION

[Scott Turchin]

Here's a sample for the TALLY command, rather than this being inside a file it's a string with several occurances of a string you may be looking for.

In my case I use the | pipe symbol to separate files from a directory search and then the calling function parses those..

Local RemoteDir as string
local RemoteFiles as string
local FileCount as long
Local lLoop as long

RemoteDir = "\\SERVERNAME\D$\EXPORT FILES"
RemoteFiles = CCSGetDirListing(RemoteDir)

'RemoteFiles may look like "Text1.txt|Txt2.txt|txt4.txt|"

FileCount = Tally(RemoteFiles,"|")
For lLoop = 1 to FileCount
FileSpec = Parse$(RemoteFiles,"|",lLoop)
Do whatever to string/file
Next


Function CCSGetDirListing(InputDir As String) Export As String
Local lCount As Long
Local lLoop As Long
Local FileSpec As String
Local Extension As String
Local FileList As String
Local f As Asciiz * %MAX_PATH
Local FindData As WIN32_FIND_DATA
Local hDir As Long

ChDir InputDir

Extension = "log"
FindData.dwFileAttributes = %FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY
f = "*.*" 'Read all files, filter later
hDir = FindFirstFile(f, FindData)
If hDir = %INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE Then
Function = "Unale to read directory!"
Exit Function
End If

Do
Select Case Left$(FindData.cFileName,1)
Case "." 'Ignore these directories
Case "_" 'Front page directories
Case Else
'Verify the extention is what we are looking for:
FileSpec = FindData.cFileName
'At this point we have a valid filename
Incr lCount
If IsTrue Len(FileList) Then
FileList = FileList & "|" & FileSpec 'Add Pipe so we can parse on it later
Else
FileList = FileSpec
End If
End Select
Loop While FindNextFile(hDir, FindData)
FindClose hDir
Function = FileList
End Function