.NET Spliting Into A 2-Dim Array

[Shadow_101]

Basically the text file holds entrant details for a Micro Mouse Competition. There are 23 details for each entrant, which are separated using TAB as the delimiter. At the moment the text file holds 10 entrants, each on its own line.

I’m trying to get this data to split into a 2 dim array to build a table of the entrants. Is it possible to split straight in to 2 dim array, or is it necessary to split into single dim arrays and parse together to make the 2dim array?

Cheers For anyhelp you can give,

Matt.

[herulach]

Surely you can just read it in in a loop, which language in .net are you using? i imagine something along the lines of

while not EOF
while not EOL
array[a,b] = spam
b+1
wend
a+1
read next line
wend

should work ok. Thats how id do it anyway, that or set a proper database backend up.

[TheAnimus]

you REALLY shouldn't use a regular 2D array for this in .net

you should instead use the DataSet class, its in effect a type of multi-dimensional array, which is typed.

The great thing about this is, it would let you use XML easily too or interface to a database. Also you can make parsers for text. Its far better than just a regular array.

[directhex]

I can't see any way to do this all in 1 go, since you need to read the input file a line at a time. Use System.String.Split( '\t' ) on each line, and add to the end of your array. Something like this:

StreamReader myfile = new StreamReader( Path.Combine( Path.Combine( Path.Combine( "path", "to" ), "your" ), "file" );
string line;
string[][] myarray;
int i = 0;
while( ( line = myfile.ReadLine( ) ) != null )
   {
      myarray[i] = line.Split( '\t' );
      i++;
   }

N.B. No I haven't tested & debugged the above. infact, this looks a lot like a 1D array of 1D arrays, rather than a 2D array

[Shad]

Well, you *could* do it like that...

But really this is what the IFormatProvider interface is for:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...tprovider.aspx

You may end up doing a similar thing inside a class that implements IFormatProvider, but at least you'll have a nice reusable interface to the code

[TheAnimus]

totally disagree, this IS NOT a format issue, as we aren't dealing with representation of single values.

we have comma seperate values.

as such the "most elegent" solution would be an IDataAdapter for handling , seperated, with a typed dataset.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...r_members.aspx

[Stoo]

What is this system for?

How is the data brought into the system, and what do you need to do with it?

[Shad]

I would combine the two really. No reason why you can't implement an IFormatProvider to interpret each individual line into a DataRow. By doing that inside the IDataAdapter you then have the ability to later handle single lines of text, matching the initial format.