Removing some (but not all) blank lines

Question

4.00/5 (1 vote)

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I have an ASP/VB page that outputs text (as a stream), for a report, that my users print (All of the text is inside of a PRE tag). I've modified the output to include css so that the page will break at the appropriate spots.

CSS

@media all
{
    .page-break{ display:none; }
}
@media print
{
    .page-break{display:block;page-break-before:always;}
}

I read in the stream, loop through each line and check for the text PAGE: I then prepend the following html code in front of the line that includes PAGE:

HTML

<div class="page-break"></div>
05/25/2012 12:55              PACKING LIST                 PAGE: 002

This works the way I want it to. The problem that I'm having is that I have two blank lines that are directly above the break point that I want to remove. I know that I can simply not write those blank lines, as I go through my for each, but here is where I'm having my problem. There are other areas in the output that has blank lines that I don't want to remove. So I can't simply remove every blank line that I come across. I only want to remove the blank lines that are directly above my page break.

Here is a portion of my code:

VB

dim obPageStream
set obPageStream = obPageData.Stream
dim bytes
dim bytetext
dim text
dim lines
dim line

do
    bytes = obPageStream.Read(8192)
    bytetext = BinaryToString(bytes)
    text = text + bytetext

loop while ubound(bytes) > 0 
    lines = Split(text, vbCrLf)
		
for each line in lines
    if InStr(line, "PAGE:") > 0 then
        if InStr(line, "PAGE: 001") > 0 then
            Response.Write(line + vbcrlf)
        else
            Response.Write("<div class=" + chr(34) + "page-break" + chr(34) + ">" + "</div>" + line + vbcrlf)
        end if
    else
        Response.Write(line + vbcrlf)
    end if
next

Response.End()

As you can see it's very simple. Any help that you all can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much!

Posted 12-Jun-12 3:54am

jay1_z

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2 solutions

Solution 1

Could you not buffer your output to a String object, then use

VB

Response.Write(strBuffered.Replace(vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "<div class="" page-break=""></div>", "<div class="" page-break=""></div>")

to remove the previous lines as you send it out?

Posted 12-Jun-12 4:17am

MarqW

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Manfred Rudolf Bihy · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-12T04:30:00

VB

dim obPageStream
set obPageStream = obPageData.Stream
dim bytes
dim bytetext
dim text
dim lines
dim line
'We'll count how many empty lines we've seen so far
dim countEmptyLines = 0

do
    bytes = obPageStream.Read(8192)
    bytetext = BinaryToString(bytes)
    text = text + bytetext

loop while ubound(bytes) > 0
    lines = Split(text, vbCrLf)

for each line in lines
    if InStr(line, "PAGE:") > 0 then
        'In case we've detected a PAGE: tag let us just reset the counter and forget about all 
        ' previous empty lines
        countEmptyLines = 0;
        if InStr(line, "PAGE: 001") > 0 then
            Response.Write(line + vbcrlf)
        else
            Response.Write("<div class=" + chr(34) + "page-break" + chr(34) + ">" + "</div>" + line + vbcrlf)
        end if
    else
        if line = "" then
            countEmptyLines = countEmptyLines + 1 'Another empty line to remember
        else
            ' Here we are sure that the current line does not have PAGE: in it
            ' So we'll output all the dangling emtpy lines and reset our counter
            for idx = 1 to countEmptyLines
                Response.Write(vbcrlf)
            end for
            countEmptyLines = 0;
            ' and we also output the current line
            Response.Write(line + vbcrlf)
        end if
    end if
next

Response.End()

Hope that resolves your issue.

Regards,

Manfred