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c#text-filesvb6-migration
Patrick White
Patrick White

Reputation: 241

Design better text file format for reading mixed type data of variable length

I am designing a text file format to be read in C#. I have a need to store types: int, double and string on a single line. I'm planning to use a .CSV format so the file can be manually opened and read. A particular record may have say 8 known types, then a variable number of "indicator" combinations of either (string, int, double) or (string, int, double, double), and some lines may include no "indicators". Thus, each record is may be of variable length.

In VB6 I would just input the data, split the data, into a variant array, then determine the number of elements on that line in the array, and use the ***VarType function to determine if the final "indicator" variables are string, int, or double and parse the field accordingly.

There may be a better way to design a text file and that may be the best solution. If so I'm interested in hearing ideas. I have searched but found no questions that specifically talk about reading variable length lines of text with mixed type into C#.

If a better format is not forthcoming, is there a way to duplicate the VB6 VarType function within C# as described two paragraphs above***? I can handle the text file reading and line splitting easily in C#.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 377

Answers (2)

dkackman
dkackman

Reputation: 15559

First I agree with Keith's suggestion to use Xml or JSON. You are reinventing a wheel here. This page has an introductory example of how to serialize objects to a file and some links to more info.

If you need to stick with your own file format and custom serialization/deserialization however take a look at the Convert class, as well as the various TryParse methods which hang off of the intrinsic value types like int and double.

Upvotes: 1

Keith Nicholas
Keith Nicholas

Reputation: 44298

you could use either json or xml as they are well supported in .NET and have automatic serialization capabilities

Upvotes: 2

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