Parsing line of text in C# with spaces

Question

Hello!

I am trying to parse lines of text that are not tab or comma delimited. Once I have loaded the lines into an array I need to grab a number from the line to be able to use for another command. The line would look like this:

rdp-tcp#142 newuser 1 Active rdpwd

And I would need the 1 (or whatever integer is there). The spaces from the user to that may not always be the same (due to username).

How can I do this? Thanks much inadvance. Love this site!

Martin · Answer

rdp-tcp#142 newuser 1 Active rdpwd From what I understand from the above there will be something like: If the above is correct and the assumption that nothing apart from the seperater can contain spaces then you can just do something along the lines of: string yourString = rdp-tcp#142 newuser 1 Active rdpwd; int location = 0; char[] array = yourString.ToCharArray(); string code = ; string userName = ; string integer = ; string active = ; string something = ; for (int i = 0; i { // Test if the next character is a whitespace if (array[i] == ' ') { location++; while (array[i] == ' ') i++; } switch (location) { case 0: code += array[i]; break; case 1: userName += array[i]; break; case 2: integer += array[i]; break; case 3: active += array[i]; break; case 4: something += array[i]; break; default: break; } } Of course that's a very ugly way to do it another would be as simple as: while (yourString.Contains(&nbsp&nbsp)) // This is a double space don't let this forum fool you yourString = yourString.Replace(&nbsp&nbsp &nbsp); And then just split it on a single space.

Scott Lysle · Answer

Well that is odd. Normally you'd see comma space tab or pipe delimited files or you'd see fixed widths (by column). A couple more questions are the blank areas between the fields filled with spaces or filled with tabs (if tabs how many?) and is there a return at the end of each line?

Jack · Answer

Looks like it can be different.... ideas?

Scott Lysle · Answer

You said that the file is not comma or tab delimited; and that the number of spaces between fields varied. Is not the file fixed width e.g. is the first field is always from 0 to 17 the second 18 to 42 etc.