How to parse a text file with C#

Question

By text formatting I meant something more complicated.

At first I began manually adding the 5000 lines from the text file I\'m asking this question for,into my proje

Answer 1

Another solution, this time making use of regular expressions:

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

...

Regex parts = new Regex(@"^\d+\t(\d+)\t.+?\t(item\\[^\t]+\.ddj)");

StreamReader reader = FileInfo.OpenText("filename.txt");
string line;
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null) {
    Match match = parts.Match(line);
    if (match.Success) {
        int number = int.Parse(match.Group(1).Value);
        string path = match.Group(2).Value;

        // At this point, `number` and `path` contain the values we want
        // for the current line. We can then store those values or print them,
        // or anything else we like.
    }
}

That expression's a little complex, so here it is broken down:

^        Start of string
\d+      "\d" means "digit" - 0-9. The "+" means "one or more."
         So this means "one or more digits."
\t       This matches a tab.
(\d+)    This also matches one or more digits. This time, though, we capture it
         using brackets. This means we can access it using the Group method.
\t       Another tab.
.+?      "." means "anything." So "one or more of anything". In addition, it's lazy.
         This is to stop it grabbing everything in sight - it'll only grab as much
         as it needs to for the regex to work.
\t       Another tab.

(item\\[^\t]+\.ddj)
    Here's the meat. This matches: "item\.ddj"