Read txt file line by line

Question

I am having trouble of making the vbscript to read the text line by line. This is the steps the code should do:

1. Read folder.txt
2. Open the file listed

Answer 1

The line

Set listFile = fso.OpenTextFile(aniLines).ReadAll

won't work for two reasons:

• Set can only be used when assigning objects to variables, but ReadAll returns a string.
• OpenTextFile() expects a string, but aniLines is an array of strings.

To process all elements of the array, you could use something like this:

For Each line In aniLines
  ' read dirlist.txt file
Next

The question is how you want to read the dirlist.txt files. You could do the same as you did with the other files: read the entire content of the file and split it into an array:

listFile  = fso.OpenTextFile(line).ReadAll
listLines = Split(listFile, vbCrLf)

and then use another loop like the one above to process the fields of the array listLines. This approach is preferrable for small files, because the code is simpler.

Or you could use the ReadLine approach (which is preferrable when you have to process large files, because it avoids memory exhaustion):

Set listFile = fso.OpenTextFile(line)  ' <-- remove .ReadAll from this line!
Do Until listFile.AtEndOfStream
  fName = listFile.ReadLine
  ' do stuff with fName
Loop

I recommend using Do Until instead of Do While Not, because the semantic is the same, but the former is closer to natural language and thus easier to read.

Also it would be sufficient to instantiate a FileSystemObject object once at the beginning of the script and just use that instance in the rest of the script. It's pointless to instantiate it over and over again.