Reading Text file C#

Question

I have the following text contents (save in a .txt file)

  Region2    Region3     Region4   Region5   Region6 
Mod Fwd   Dir     TOP SYS  SECURITY    ZONING      BOTTOM    FCC DIS   FCC ENA 
    Eng          Use/Total Use/Total  Use/Total   Use/Total Use/Total Use/Total
--- ---  ------ ---------- --------- ------------ --------- --------- ---------
1   1    INPUT     20/407     1/407      0/2852      8/407     0/0       0/0   
1   1    OUTPUT     0/25      0/25       0/140       0/25      0/12      1/25  
1   2    INPUT     20/407     1/407      0/2852      8/407     0/0       0/0   
1   2    OUTPUT     0/25      0/25       0/140       0/25      0/12      1/25  
1   3    INPUT     20/407     1/407      0/2852      4/407     0/0       0/0   
1   3    OUTPUT     0/25      0/25       0/140       0/25      0/12      1/25

What I Need to get is the zoning details only and put that in another text file so the end result should look like this

Region3 - Zoning
Use/Total
0/2852
0/140
0/2852
0/140
0/2852
0/140

I am struggling to read the format correctly any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Ok so a new day and a fresh mind, thanks for all your comments. This is how I resolved the issue (the thing here is that it will take into account if the zoning column moves to a different location)

Here is the code

int headerCount = 1;
        int zoneNumber = 0;
        string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines(@"C:\temp\tcam\test.txt");
        foreach (string line in lines)
        {
            headerCount++;
            if (headerCount == 6)
            {
                string[] zonelocation = line.Split(new char[0], StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
                int zoneCount = 0;
                string lastVal = "";
                foreach (var x in zonelocation)
                {
                    zoneCount++;
                    if (lastVal.ToLower() == "top" && x.ToLower() == "sys") zoneCount--;
                    if (x.ToLower() == "zoning") zoneNumber = zoneCount - 1;
                    lastVal = x;
                }
            }
            if (headerCount > 8)
            {
                string[] zoneinfo = line.Split(new char[0], StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
                if (zoneinfo.Any())
                {
                    string[] zoneData = zoneinfo[zoneNumber].Split(new char[] {'/'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
                    Console.WriteLine($"Fwd Eng {zoneinfo[1]}, Direction {zoneinfo[2]}, Used {zoneData[0]}, Total {zoneData[1]}");
                }
            }
        }

Here is the output

Fwd Eng 1, Direction INPUT, Used 0, Total 2852

Answer 2

To read all the lines from the file use File.ReadAllLines.

If the format is always the same, I would skip the header, using the Linq extension Skip(). Then split the fields on space with this override of String.Split() that allow to filter out empty strings.

like:

        foreach (var line in File.ReadLines("yourfile.txt").Skip(4))
        {
            var fields = line.Split(new[] {" "}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
            //do something with the fields
        }

In alternative if a tab separator is used, you could use: line.Split('\t');

Then you retrieve the field you need from the fields array, so for the 6th field:

var myField = fields[5]

You can put all the lines you have to write to a string array (or list), then write everything with File.WriteAllLines:

File.WriteAllLines("output.txt", myOutputLines);

---

Complete solution

Here is a possible solution that put all together using LINQ and IEnumerables, to streamline the file conversion without loading everything into memory (to allow to process efficiently large files)

var inputLines = File.ReadLines("yourfile.txt").Skip(4);
var outputHeader = new[] { "Region3 - Zoning", "Use/Total" };
var outputLines = inputLines.Select(line => line.Split(new[] { " " }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)[5]);
File.WriteAllLines("output.txt", outputHeader.Concat(outputLines));