Delete Text From File

[danny greenwood]

Can anybody give me some pointers on how to delete text from a file.

I can open the file and read in all the data using LINE INPUT.
Do i then search the string for the text i want to delete, remove it from the string,
then output the string back into a text file. Would this work?

On a similar note, There are API's to write to .ini files and API's to Read from .ini
files, but there is nothing to delete a key and value from the ini file. How would this
be accomplished?

Ta!

Danny

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[Per Fimmeland]

The API's for dealing with INI's may also delete content.

From MSDN

BOOL WritePrivateProfileString(
  LPCTSTR lpAppName,  // pointer to section name
  LPCTSTR lpKeyName,  // pointer to key name
  LPCTSTR lpString,   // pointer to string to add
  LPCTSTR lpFileName  // pointer to initialization filename
);
 
Parameters
  lpAppName 
      Pointer to a null-terminated string containing the name of the section 
      to which the string will be copied. If the section does not exist, 
      it is created. The name of the section is case-independent; the string 
      can be any combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. 
  lpKeyName 
      Pointer to the null-terminated string containing the name of the key to 
      be associated with a string. If the key does not exist in the specified
      section, it is created. If this parameter is NULL, the entire section, 
      including all entries within the section, is deleted. 
  lpString 
      Pointer to a null-terminated string to be written to the file. If this 
      parameter is NULL, the key pointed to by the lpKeyName parameter is deleted. 
  lpFileName 
      Pointer to a null-terminated string that names the initialization file.

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[This message has been edited by Per Fimmeland (edited June 21, 2001).]

[Tom Hanlin]

It's not possible to delete text from the middle of a file. What you need
to do is use two files, an input file and an output file. You read data
from the input file, and only write the parts you want to keep to the output
file. When the process is complete, if there were no errors, you can delete
the original input file and rename the output file to the old input file.


------------------
Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[danny greenwood]

Continuing the discussion on the ini file...

Is this correct?

CALL WritePrivateProfileString(qSection, qKey, NULL , IniFile1Name)

All variables are ASCIIZ

according to ...

"lpString
Pointer to a null-terminated string to be written to the file. If this
parameter is NULL, the key pointed to by the lpKeyName parameter is deleted."

..well it can't be cos it wont compile! How do i set that parameter to NULL?

Danny


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[Neil Hosgood]

you could try "" as the param or I think $NUL is internal

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[Simon Morgan]

To send a null string pointer to a procedure, use:

BYVAL %Null

[This message has been edited by Simon Morgan (edited June 22, 2001).]

[danny greenwood]

Thanks for that one!

Rgds.

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[Aldo Cavini]

Remember under Windows NT, by default, APIs like WritePrivateProfileString work on the registry. To be SURE I'm working on a INI file, I work on the file by-hand.

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