How should I structure my hierarchical textual data?

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I'm creating a hierarchical textual data listing with the format shown below. This data will be contained in a plain text file. I want to read it into some kind of structure (using C#) and I'm not sure what kind of structure would be best or what is available in C#.

The first line is the Title line.

The next line is flush left and is a Top Level item.

The items associated with this top level item are shown immediately below it, with each one of their lines indented by one space. You can see the pattern.

On my form, I will list the top level items in a listbox and when an is selected, I want to populate to the right of this listbox, the associated items in a richTextBox component.

So, I can click on a checklist item such as Before Start and see the associated items in the richTextBox.

What options do I have to read in this data and store in some kind of data structure?

Thanks...

C#

Aircraft Type
Preflight
 Oxygen
 Navigation transfer and display switches
 Window heat
 Pressurization mode selector
 Flight instruments
Before Start
 Flight deck door
 Fuel
 Passenger signs
 Windows
 MCP
Before Taxi
 Generators
 Probe heat
 Anti-ice

Posted 28-Jun-14 20:05pm

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George Jonsson 29-Jun-14 2:10am

Why not use XML?
What you have created is basically an XML structure, but without the tags.

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OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-28T20:41:00

If you insist on using this storage format, then you will have to handle it all yourself:
Read each line, count the number of leading spaces, and decide where it goes.
You'll probably want a Dictionary<string, List<string>> where the key is the top level item.

As has been suggested, an XML file would probably be a lot easier to use as there are already systems to extract the data in a hierarchical manner.