Newbie question: Parsing a line

[Rhino]

Let's say that I'm reading an external file with a macro:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub readFromFile()
Const READ As Integer = 1
Const DO_NOT_CREATE As Boolean = False
Const TristateUseDefault As Integer = -2
Const FILE_NAME As String = "c:\Documents and Settings\Rhino\My
Documents\resume.txt"
Dim file, fileObject, textStream, oneLine

' Open the file
Set fileObject = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set file = fileObject.GetFile(FILE_NAME)
Set textStream = file.OpenAsTextStream(READ, TristateUseDefault)

' Read the file a line at a time until it has all been read
Do While textStream.AtEndOfStream <> True
oneLine = textStream.ReadLine

'---Pseudocode starts after this line---

'---Pseudocode ends before this line---

MsgBox oneLine
Loop

' Close the file
textStream.Close
End Sub
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the pseudocode area within the loop, I want to inspect each line as its
read and format the data in that line based on what key is being displayed.
Something like this:

Pseudocode:

dim positionOfEqualSign as Integer = -1 'this variable holds position of
equal sign on given line
positionOfEqualSign = oneLine.indexOf("=") 'find the equal sign for the
current line
key = oneLine.substring(0, positionOfEqualSign) 'the key is the part of the
line before the = sign
if (key = "Name")
'write and format name
else
if (key = "Address")
'write and format address
else
if (key = "Phone")
'write and format phone number
else
MsgBox 'Unexpected key, ' key ', ignored'
end



Can anyone tell me how to accomplish this in a Word macro? I've looked and I
can't find anything that is capable of looking at a given line of text to
see if it contains a given character, nor can I find anything that gives a
substring of a given string, such as the first x characters of the string.

I'm using Word 2002 on XP Pro.

 

[Rhino]

I eventually found what I wanted in the help files; the function to locate a
character within a string is InStr and the functions to extract a portion of
a string are left(), right(), and mid().

I guess I should have looked that much longer before posting Oh well,
the information may be useful to some other newbie someday who is trying to
do the same thing....

Mind you, it would still be useful to know if I can do 'find' searches on
the external file somehow. (See my previous post.)

Rhino

 

[Jezebel]

To look for a given string within another, use Instr() or InstrRev(). You
can also use LIKE with a regular expression.

To return a substring, use Left$(). Mid$(), or Right$().

Rather than reading the file one line at a time, it is *much* quicker to
read the entire file in one operation, split into an array, then process the
array elements --

Dim pFileNum as long
Dim pFileContents as string
Dim pLines() as string
Dim pIndex as long
Dim pPostion as long
Dim pKey as string

pFileNum = Freefile
Open FILE_NAME for input as pFileNum
pFileContents = Input(LOF(pFileNum), pFileNum)
Close #pFileNum

pLines = split(pFileContents, vbCr) 'Might need to use vbCrLf
for pIndex = lbound(pLines) to uBound(pLines)

pPosition = instr(pLines(pIndex), "=")
if pPosition > 0 then
pKey = trim$(Left$(pLines(pindex), pPosition - 1))
Select case pKey
Case "Name"
...
Case else
End select
end if

Next