What should I be doing differently?

[Nathill]

I am working on a program for my Visual Basic I class that provides the user with a list of Computer Pioneers and displays their accomplishments to a text box when selected. Ive succesfully loaded the text file, but I am struggling displaying the output! Could anyone give me some insight on where to go from here?

Public Class Form1

    Structure Pioneers
        Dim Name As String
        Dim Accomplishments As String
    End Structure

    Dim pioneer() As Pioneers
  

    Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        Dim people() As String = IO.File.ReadAllLines("Pioneers.txt")
        Dim n As Integer = people.Count - 1
        ReDim pioneer(n)
        Dim peoples() As String
        For i As Integer = 0 To n
            peoples = people(i).Split(","c)
            pioneer(i).Name = CStr(peoples(0))
            pioneer(i).Accomplishments = CStr(peoples(1))
            lstNames.Items.Add(pioneer(i).Name)
        Next



    End Sub

    Private Sub lstNames_SelectedIndexChanged(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles lstNames.SelectedIndexChanged
        Dim query = From person In pioneer
                    Where person.Accomplishments = txtAccomplishments.Text



    End Sub
End Class

[dglienna]

Form_Load is BEFORE the form is loaded. Wrong place!

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Form_Load is BEFORE the form is loaded. Wrong place!

Actually, Form_Load happens after the form has been loaded, thus making it the perfect place for this type of processing. A complete list of Form events can be found here :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...vs.110%29.aspx

details on the Form.Load event can be found here :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...vs.110%29.aspx

And the order of events ( when a form, or rather an app starts ) can be found here :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...vs.110%29.aspx

[TheGreatCthulhu]

So far, this peace of code doesn't really do anything:

Private Sub lstNames_SelectedIndexChanged(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles lstNames.SelectedIndexChanged
        Dim query = From person In pioneer
                    Where person.Accomplishments = txtAccomplishments.Text



    End Sub

The LINQ query above will filter the pioneer array, returning only elements that have Accomplishments = txtAccomplishments.Text (but, the match must be exact - be careful with whitespaces and case).
But, the query is just an object that internally stores all the operations specified for the query - it will not be actually evaluated until you enumerate the elements.
You can force the query to be evaluated by calling .ToList() on it (it will return a List(Of element_type)).

To display this data, you need to assign it to some UI element. Depending on how you're displaying it, you may need to convert it to some form that the UI can use first. For example, if you want to display it as text, then convert the filtered elements to strings (which you might also concatenate to one long string later, if required).
You can use LINQ to do this - simply add a Select clause after the Where-line; Select "projects" the elements it gets into something else, of your choosing - so if you construct and return a string within the Select clause, your query will return a list of strings.

You can either populate your UI manually and keep track of changes, or use data binding.