Change Data Structure Length during VB6 runtime?

[kpierce]

Hello:
I need to create a data structure and the file has a single field per record, and it will be fixed length for each record.

For example FILE1.TXT
1234
3456
6789

FILE2.TXT
65432
76543
34567

FILE3.TXT
5467812
6583945
6958485

Is there a way to dynamically change the data structure during VB6 runtime?
The lenght is fixed inside a given file, but each file can have a different length from 3-10.

'Record data structure
Type tRec
strTMK As String * 5 (if FILE1.TXT this is 4, if FILE2.TXT this is 5, if FIL3.TXT this is 7, etc)
CR_LF As String * 2
End Type

Your help is much appreciated.

thanks
kp

[DataMiser]

Yes and no, If the intention is to use a binary read of x bytes into the given string then you could do so by not assigning a length to the string when it is dimmed then initialize it later to the size needed.

Dim MyString as string
MyString = String(X, " ")
Get #1,,MyString

Where x is the number of bytes you wish to have in the string. The get statement will read the number of bytes that are in the string so you simply change the value of X to read a different number of bytes.


Edit
If you want to use structures of different sizes you do this by defining each of those structures and then using the one that you will need for the given task.

[WoF]

Yes, right.
But if your file is line oriented anyway, and you don't want to do random access you can read it on a line by line base, where the data structure has dynamic strings
Come to think about it, you do not need a data structure at all.
Storing the CrLf is redundant anyway.

All depends if you read all the data into memory or if you want to do random access to the files.

[DataMiser]

From the other thread I gather that the goal is to be able to write to the file at a given location. Random access or Binary is the best way to do so with Random acess being the most simple.

I provided a small sample in the other thread. This sample could be adapted using the string sizing I have shown in this thread to a function that could take the size as a parameter and work with the files in question.

[WoF]

Yes. It's a good sample.
I just wrote this post before noticing the other thread.