Reading a section of text file between tokens in C#

Question

I have a text file that is bounded by tokens that define a section of the file. For example. A start token string is "2D FILES". The end token is "END". Each line in between the tokens can be read into a dictionary key and value. How to read the relevant lines of code that are only in between the two tokens:

Test File
Description

2D FILES
C:\Temp\Temp123 123
C:\Temp\Temp321 321
C:\Temp\Temp456 4564
END

TestFile
Footer
Footer2
Footer3

Answer 1

@Al S , Welcome to Microsoft Q&A, you could use the index of start token and end token to get a section of textfile.

Here is a code example you could refer to.

 var file = File.ReadAllLines("test.txt").ToList();  
            int startindex = file.IndexOf("2D FILES");  
            int endindex = file.IndexOf("END");  
            var result = file.Skip(startindex + 1).Take(endindex-startindex-1);  
            Dictionary<string, int> dic = new Dictionary<string, int>();  
            foreach (var item in result)  
            {  
                dic.Add(item.Split(' ')[0], Convert.ToInt32(item.Split(' ')[1]));  
            }  
            foreach (var item in dic)  
            {  
                Console.WriteLine("key is {0} and value is {1}",item.Key,item.Value);  
            }  

Tested result:

Hope this could help you.

Best Regards,
Jack

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Answer 2

Hi Jack.

Problem at line 8:
System.FormatException
HResult=0x80131537
Message=Input string was not in a correct format.

Trying to see why.

Thanks for the sample

Answer 3

Hello,

I eventually solved the issue with the trailing spaces:

string[] seperators = { " ", "\t" }; // this provides the means to identify the spaces between key and value.
TwoD_List.Add(item.Split(seperators, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)[0],
Convert.ToInt32(item.Split(seperators, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)[1]));