Reading properties file

[fiodis]

If by anything you mean code for reading it, I was trying to think of how to go about it when a friend suggested I use ReadLine to put each line into a string array, then for every property I could loop through the array until the first few characters of a line match that property's name. Once I got the property's position in the array I could use array[index].Substring(#, #) to get the value, and Convert.ToInt or something to convert it to a numeric value. Could that work?

To do that for every single property (I'm expecting 10 - 60 properties per file) seems rather complex and expensive, but as you noted, it's a really odd file, so I'll have to do whatever works. To that end I wrote up some code to test it:

string fileName;
string[] fileDataArray;
int fDAIndex = 0;

        private void loadToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (openFileDialog1.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
            {
                fileName = openFileDialog1.FileName;

                System.IO.StreamReader tr = new System.IO.StreamReader(fileName);
                // Read the lines of the file into an array
                while (tr.Peek() >= 0)
                {
                    fileDataArray[fDAIndex] = tr.ReadLine();
                    fDAIndex = fDAIndex + 1;
                }
                tr.Close();

                fDAIndex = 0;
                // Get the index where the string containing "Angle(-90.0);" is stored
                while (fileDataArray[fDAIndex].Substring(0, 5) != "Angle")
                {
                    fDAIndex = fDAIndex + 1;
                }
                // Get the "-90.0" part of the string
                string angleValueStr = fileDataArray[fDAIndex].Substring(5, 5);
                // To check if it worked, display angleValueStr in the angleValueText textbox (already on the form)
                angleValueText.Text = angleValueStr;
            }
        }

When I load the file, I get an error at fileDataArray[fDAIndex] = tr.ReadLine(); saying that "NullReferenceException was unhandled" and "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." What's going on? Moreover, is there a better way to get this data than this current playing around with ReadLine and string array and substrings?


EDIT - I changed the code slightly. Instead of that bit with the tr StreamReader and the while loop that loads the lines into an array, I now just have the one line:

fileDataArray = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(fileName);

I still get an error when loading the file, this time at the line that says

while (fileDataArray[fDAIndex].Substring(0, 5) != "Angle")

The error is "Index and length must refer to a location within the string." The problem is with Substring(0, 5); some lines only have one character, so I get an error when Substring tries to read the first 5 characters. How to I get the while loop to continue on past that error? I can't really do Substring(0, 1) since 1 character isn't really much use in identifying the property.

Further, even when I used Substring(0, 1) != "A", I got the same error. I guess C# reads the lines with just newline characters as characterless, so it will only accept Substring(0, 0)?