Click here to Skip to main content
Licence 
First Posted 26 Oct 2006
Views 48,543
Downloads 220
Bookmarked 34 times

Text Parser for C#

By | 26 Oct 2006 | Article
This class parses text data stored in String or TextReader objects, i.e., it is suitable for loading of text files.

Introduction

While .NET class BinaryReader provides many useful methods, e.g., ReadByte, ReadDouble, etc., there are no such methods in TextReader. As far as I know, there is neither a .NET class similar to good Java Scanner class (java.util.Scanner) nor a .NET class providing methods similar to C/C++ CRT function scanf. This means that the reading of text files may become, especially for beginners, a nightmare. The common way is to read the whole line, split it into tokens and convert these tokens into the required format (Byte, Double, Int32, ...) but it is not very convenient. Therefore I decided to program my own class to simplify text data processing.

Using the Code

ZCU.IO.TextParser is a small class written in C# 2.0 that is able to read text data from String or TextReader object. It provides methods for reading numbers, words, tokens matching the given pattern, etc. It also contains the method Scanf for formatted reading.

The following example, which can read 2D or 3D points from the text file, demonstrates the use of this class.

Input file 1

100
0.10330 0.00540
0.42320 0.49370
0.23690 0.56980

etc.

Input file 2

100
0.10330 0.00540 0.23690
0.42320 0.49370 0.23690
0.23690 0.56980 0.10330

etc.

The code for loading input files is as follows:

StreamReader lReader = new StreamReader(new FileStream(strFilePath, 
		FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read),Encoding.UTF8);

ZCU.IO.TextParser parser = new ZCU.IO.TextParser(lReader);

//loads the number of points in the file
uint nNumVert = parser.ReadUInt32();
m_TriData.Vertices = new TRS_VERTEX[nNumVert];

//reads the first point
string line = parser.ReadLine();
ZCU.IO.TextParser line_parser = new ZCU.IO.TextParser(line);

//buffer for objects retrieved by Scanf
object[] xyz = new object[3];
xyz[2] = new System.Single();        //0,1(x,y) are always created by Scanf
string format = "%f %f %f\n";
if (line_parser.Scanf(format, xyz) < 3)
    format = "%f %f\n";              //z-coordinate not in file

List<STRING> formatList = ZCU.IO.TextParser.ConstructFormatList(format);

m_TriData.Vertices[0].x = (float)xyz[0];
m_TriData.Vertices[0].y = (float)xyz[1];
m_TriData.Vertices[0].z = (float)xyz[2];

for(uint i = 1; i < nNumVert; i++)
{
    parser.Scanf(formatList, xyz);
    m_TriData.Vertices[i].x = (float)xyz[0];
    m_TriData.Vertices[i].y = (float)xyz[1];
    m_TriData.Vertices[i].y = (float)xyz[2];
}

Points of Interest

The source code can be used, modified and redistributed under the terms of the license agreement that is included in the deployment package.

History

  • 26.10.2006 - version 1.0

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here

About the Author

BeSoft



Czech Republic Czech Republic

Member



Sign Up to vote   Poor Excellent
Add a reason or comment to your vote: x
Votes of 3 or less require a comment

Comments and Discussions

 
You must Sign In to use this message board. (secure sign-in)
 
Search this forum  
 FAQ
    Noise  Layout  Per page   
  Refresh
GeneralReading lrc file PinmemberMegalan3:30 27 Feb '09  
GeneralLp,BP,HP filters design in C# [modified] PinmemberKeleistein21:57 9 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Lp,BP,HP filters design in C# PinmemberKeleistein14:29 12 Apr '07  
GeneralReading text file Pinmemberkelvinic18:19 3 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file PinmemberBeSoft21:17 3 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file Pinmemberkelvinic22:08 3 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file PinmemberBeSoft22:56 3 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file Pinmemberkelvinic23:00 3 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file PinmemberBeSoft23:29 3 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file Pinmemberkelvinic1:55 4 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file PinmemberBeSoft2:36 4 Apr '07  
GeneralRe: Reading text file PinmemberKeleistein21:59 9 Apr '07  
QuestionSample Question Pinmembersides_dale18:09 1 Nov '06  

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.

Permalink | Advertise | Privacy | Mobile
Web04 | 2.5.120517.1 | Last Updated 26 Oct 2006
Article Copyright 2006 by BeSoft
Everything else Copyright © CodeProject, 1999-2012
Terms of Use
Layout: fixed | fluid