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Read & write a single line from a file without overwrite [duplicate]

I have two text files, Source.txt and Target.txt. The source will never be modified and contain N lines of text. So, I want to delete a specific line of text in Target.txt, and replace by an specific line of text from Source.txt, I know what number of line I need, actually is the line number 2, both files.
I haven something like this:
string line = string.Empty;
int line_number = 1;
int line_to_edit = 2;
using StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(#"C:\target.xml");
using StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(#"C:\target.xml");
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (line_number == line_to_edit)
writer.WriteLine(line);
line_number++;
}
But when I open the Writer, the target file get erased, it writes the lines, but, when opened, the target file only contains the copied lines, the rest get lost.
What can I do?

the easiest way is :
static void lineChanger(string newText, string fileName, int line_to_edit)
{
string[] arrLine = File.ReadAllLines(fileName);
arrLine[line_to_edit - 1] = newText;
File.WriteAllLines(fileName, arrLine);
}
usage :
lineChanger("new content for this line" , "sample.text" , 34);

You can't rewrite a line without rewriting the entire file (unless the lines happen to be the same length). If your files are small then reading the entire target file into memory and then writing it out again might make sense. You can do that like this:
using System;
using System.IO;
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int line_to_edit = 2; // Warning: 1-based indexing!
string sourceFile = "source.txt";
string destinationFile = "target.txt";
// Read the appropriate line from the file.
string lineToWrite = null;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(sourceFile))
{
for (int i = 1; i <= line_to_edit; ++i)
lineToWrite = reader.ReadLine();
}
if (lineToWrite == null)
throw new InvalidDataException("Line does not exist in " + sourceFile);
// Read the old file.
string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines(destinationFile);
// Write the new file over the old file.
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(destinationFile))
{
for (int currentLine = 1; currentLine <= lines.Length; ++currentLine)
{
if (currentLine == line_to_edit)
{
writer.WriteLine(lineToWrite);
}
else
{
writer.WriteLine(lines[currentLine - 1]);
}
}
}
}
}
If your files are large it would be better to create a new file so that you can read streaming from one file while you write to the other. This means that you don't need to have the whole file in memory at once. You can do that like this:
using System;
using System.IO;
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int line_to_edit = 2;
string sourceFile = "source.txt";
string destinationFile = "target.txt";
string tempFile = "target2.txt";
// Read the appropriate line from the file.
string lineToWrite = null;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(sourceFile))
{
for (int i = 1; i <= line_to_edit; ++i)
lineToWrite = reader.ReadLine();
}
if (lineToWrite == null)
throw new InvalidDataException("Line does not exist in " + sourceFile);
// Read from the target file and write to a new file.
int line_number = 1;
string line = null;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(destinationFile))
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(tempFile))
{
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (line_number == line_to_edit)
{
writer.WriteLine(lineToWrite);
}
else
{
writer.WriteLine(line);
}
line_number++;
}
}
// TODO: Delete the old file and replace it with the new file here.
}
}
You can afterwards move the file once you are sure that the write operation has succeeded (no excecption was thrown and the writer is closed).
Note that in both cases it is a bit confusing that you are using 1-based indexing for your line numbers. It might make more sense in your code to use 0-based indexing. You can have 1-based index in your user interface to your program if you wish, but convert it to a 0-indexed before sending it further.
Also, a disadvantage of directly overwriting the old file with the new file is that if it fails halfway through then you might permanently lose whatever data wasn't written. By writing to a third file first you only delete the original data after you are sure that you have another (corrected) copy of it, so you can recover the data if the computer crashes halfway through.
A final remark: I noticed that your files had an xml extension. You might want to consider if it makes more sense for you to use an XML parser to modify the contents of the files instead of replacing specific lines.

When you create a StreamWriter it always create a file from scratch, you will have to create a third file and copy from target and replace what you need, and then replace the old one.
But as I can see what you need is XML manipulation, you might want to use XmlDocument and modify your file using Xpath.

You need to Open the output file for write access rather than using a new StreamReader, which always overwrites the output file.
StreamWriter stm = null;
fi = new FileInfo(#"C:\target.xml");
if (fi.Exists)
stm = fi.OpenWrite();
Of course, you will still have to seek to the correct line in the output file, which will be hard since you can't read from it, so unless you already KNOW the byte offset to seek to, you probably really want read/write access.
FileStream stm = fi.Open(FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.None);
with this stream, you can read until you get to the point where you want to make changes, then write. Keep in mind that you are writing bytes, not lines, so to overwrite a line you will need to write the same number of characters as the line you want to change.

I guess the below should work (instead of the writer part from your example). I'm unfortunately with no build environment so It's from memory but I hope it helps
using (var fs = File.Open(filePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite)))
{
var destinationReader = StreamReader(fs);
var writer = StreamWriter(fs);
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (line_number == line_to_edit)
{
writer.WriteLine(lineToWrite);
}
else
{
destinationReader .ReadLine();
}
line_number++;
}
}

The solution works fine. But I need to change single-line text when the same text is in multiple places. For this, need to define a trackText to start finding after that text and finally change oldText with newText.
private int FindLineNumber(string fileName, string trackText, string oldText, string newText)
{
int lineNumber = 0;
string[] textLine = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(fileName);
for (int i = 0; i< textLine.Length;i++)
{
if (textLine[i].Contains(trackText)) //start finding matching text after.
traced = true;
if (traced)
if (textLine[i].Contains(oldText)) // Match text
{
textLine[i] = newText; // replace text with new one.
traced = false;
System.IO.File.WriteAllLines(fileName, textLine);
lineNumber = i;
break; //go out from loop
}
}
return lineNumber
}

Count line in a file and write the count into a new file using same name of the text in the folder

I'm trying to write code to count the lines in each file inside my folder(NewCode), and I have that part working, but I also need to write the line count into a new file (in a new folder (NewCodeOutput)) with the same name as the text file that was read.
Here's my code:
string[] ori_Files = Directory.GetFiles(#"D:\C#\NewCode\", "*.txt*",
SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);
string path2 = #"D:\C#\NewCodeOutput\";
foreach (var file in ori_Files)
{
using (StreamReader file1 = new StreamReader(file))
{
string line;
int count = 0;
while ((line = file1.ReadLine()) != null)
{
//Console.WriteLine(line);
count++;
}
Console.WriteLine(count);
}
}
Console.ReadLine();

You can use Path.GetFileName to extract the file name, and then write the count.
var completeOutputPath = Path.Combine(path2,Path.GetFileName(file));
File.WriteAllText(completeOutputPath, $"Count:{count}");
This should appear before your Console.WriteLine(count) within the loop

You can simply use Path.Combine along with Path.GetFileName to generate the new path with the existing file's name.
You can also use the System.IO.File class to simplify the line counting and file writing:
foreach (var file in Directory.GetFiles(#"D:\C#\NewCode\", "*.txt*",
SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly))
{
File.WriteAllText(Path.Combine(#"D:\C#\NewCodeOutput\", Path.GetFileName(file)),
File.ReadAllLines(file).Length.ToString());
}

Replace a line in text file without creating another file [duplicate]

I have two text files, Source.txt and Target.txt. The source will never be modified and contain N lines of text. So, I want to delete a specific line of text in Target.txt, and replace by an specific line of text from Source.txt, I know what number of line I need, actually is the line number 2, both files.
I haven something like this:
string line = string.Empty;
int line_number = 1;
int line_to_edit = 2;
using StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(#"C:\target.xml");
using StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(#"C:\target.xml");
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (line_number == line_to_edit)
writer.WriteLine(line);
line_number++;
}
But when I open the Writer, the target file get erased, it writes the lines, but, when opened, the target file only contains the copied lines, the rest get lost.
What can I do?

the easiest way is :
static void lineChanger(string newText, string fileName, int line_to_edit)
{
string[] arrLine = File.ReadAllLines(fileName);
arrLine[line_to_edit - 1] = newText;
File.WriteAllLines(fileName, arrLine);
}
usage :
lineChanger("new content for this line" , "sample.text" , 34);

You can't rewrite a line without rewriting the entire file (unless the lines happen to be the same length). If your files are small then reading the entire target file into memory and then writing it out again might make sense. You can do that like this:
using System;
using System.IO;
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int line_to_edit = 2; // Warning: 1-based indexing!
string sourceFile = "source.txt";
string destinationFile = "target.txt";
// Read the appropriate line from the file.
string lineToWrite = null;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(sourceFile))
{
for (int i = 1; i <= line_to_edit; ++i)
lineToWrite = reader.ReadLine();
}
if (lineToWrite == null)
throw new InvalidDataException("Line does not exist in " + sourceFile);
// Read the old file.
string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines(destinationFile);
// Write the new file over the old file.
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(destinationFile))
{
for (int currentLine = 1; currentLine <= lines.Length; ++currentLine)
{
if (currentLine == line_to_edit)
{
writer.WriteLine(lineToWrite);
}
else
{
writer.WriteLine(lines[currentLine - 1]);
}
}
}
}
}
If your files are large it would be better to create a new file so that you can read streaming from one file while you write to the other. This means that you don't need to have the whole file in memory at once. You can do that like this:
using System;
using System.IO;
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int line_to_edit = 2;
string sourceFile = "source.txt";
string destinationFile = "target.txt";
string tempFile = "target2.txt";
// Read the appropriate line from the file.
string lineToWrite = null;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(sourceFile))
{
for (int i = 1; i <= line_to_edit; ++i)
lineToWrite = reader.ReadLine();
}
if (lineToWrite == null)
throw new InvalidDataException("Line does not exist in " + sourceFile);
// Read from the target file and write to a new file.
int line_number = 1;
string line = null;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(destinationFile))
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(tempFile))
{
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (line_number == line_to_edit)
{
writer.WriteLine(lineToWrite);
}
else
{
writer.WriteLine(line);
}
line_number++;
}
}
// TODO: Delete the old file and replace it with the new file here.
}
}
You can afterwards move the file once you are sure that the write operation has succeeded (no excecption was thrown and the writer is closed).
Note that in both cases it is a bit confusing that you are using 1-based indexing for your line numbers. It might make more sense in your code to use 0-based indexing. You can have 1-based index in your user interface to your program if you wish, but convert it to a 0-indexed before sending it further.
Also, a disadvantage of directly overwriting the old file with the new file is that if it fails halfway through then you might permanently lose whatever data wasn't written. By writing to a third file first you only delete the original data after you are sure that you have another (corrected) copy of it, so you can recover the data if the computer crashes halfway through.
A final remark: I noticed that your files had an xml extension. You might want to consider if it makes more sense for you to use an XML parser to modify the contents of the files instead of replacing specific lines.

When you create a StreamWriter it always create a file from scratch, you will have to create a third file and copy from target and replace what you need, and then replace the old one.
But as I can see what you need is XML manipulation, you might want to use XmlDocument and modify your file using Xpath.

You need to Open the output file for write access rather than using a new StreamReader, which always overwrites the output file.
StreamWriter stm = null;
fi = new FileInfo(#"C:\target.xml");
if (fi.Exists)
stm = fi.OpenWrite();
Of course, you will still have to seek to the correct line in the output file, which will be hard since you can't read from it, so unless you already KNOW the byte offset to seek to, you probably really want read/write access.
FileStream stm = fi.Open(FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.None);
with this stream, you can read until you get to the point where you want to make changes, then write. Keep in mind that you are writing bytes, not lines, so to overwrite a line you will need to write the same number of characters as the line you want to change.

I guess the below should work (instead of the writer part from your example). I'm unfortunately with no build environment so It's from memory but I hope it helps
using (var fs = File.Open(filePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite)))
{
var destinationReader = StreamReader(fs);
var writer = StreamWriter(fs);
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (line_number == line_to_edit)
{
writer.WriteLine(lineToWrite);
}
else
{
destinationReader .ReadLine();
}
line_number++;
}
}

The solution works fine. But I need to change single-line text when the same text is in multiple places. For this, need to define a trackText to start finding after that text and finally change oldText with newText.
private int FindLineNumber(string fileName, string trackText, string oldText, string newText)
{
int lineNumber = 0;
string[] textLine = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(fileName);
for (int i = 0; i< textLine.Length;i++)
{
if (textLine[i].Contains(trackText)) //start finding matching text after.
traced = true;
if (traced)
if (textLine[i].Contains(oldText)) // Match text
{
textLine[i] = newText; // replace text with new one.
traced = false;
System.IO.File.WriteAllLines(fileName, textLine);
lineNumber = i;
break; //go out from loop
}
}
return lineNumber
}

Why isn't there newline on this file write?

I have written some code to compare 2 files and write their common lines to a 3rd file. For some reason though the 3rd file which contains the common lines has ALL the common lines written to it on 1 line. This should really be 1 new line per common line..I have even tried adding Console.WriteLine('\n'); to add a new line to separate the common lines but this isn't helping. Any ideas as to what is wrong?
//This program will read files and compares to see if they have a line in common
//if there is a line in common then it writes than common line to a new file
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int counter = 0;
string line;
string sline;
string[] words;
string[] samacc = new string[280];
//first file to compare
System.IO.StreamReader sfile =
new System.IO.StreamReader("C:\\Desktop\\autoit\\New folder\\userlist.txt");
while ((sline = sfile.ReadLine()) != null)
{
samacc[counter] = sline;
Console.WriteLine();
counter++;
}
sfile.Close();
//file to write common lines to.
System.IO.StreamWriter wfile = new System.IO.StreamWriter("C:\\Desktop\\autoit\\New folder\\KenUserList.txt");
counter = 0;
//second file to compare
System.IO.StreamReader file =
new System.IO.StreamReader("C:\\Desktop\\autoit\\New folder\\AllUserHomeDirectories.txt");
while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
{
words = line.Split('\t');
foreach (string i in samacc)
{
if (words[0] == i)
{
foreach (string x in words)
{
wfile.Write(x);
wfile.Write('\t');
}
Console.WriteLine('\n');
}
}
}
file.Close();
wfile.Close();
// Suspend the screen.
Console.ReadLine();
}

Change Console.WriteLine('\n'); to wfile.WriteLine('\n');

You can do this in a much better way:
var file1 = File.ReadLines(#"path1");
var file2 = File.ReadLines(#"path2");
var common = file1.Intersect(file2); //returns all lines common to both files
File.WriteAllLines("path3", common);

Split text file, fastest method

Morning,
I'm trying to split a large text file (15,000,000 rows) using StreamReader/StreamWriter. Is there a quicker way?
I tested it with 130,000 rows and it took 2min 40sec which implies 15,000,000 rows will take approx 5hrs which seems a bit excessive.
//Perform split.
public void SplitFiles(int[] newFiles, string filePath, int processorCount)
{
using (StreamReader Reader = new StreamReader(filePath))
{
for (int i = 0; i < newFiles.Length; i++)
{
string extension = System.IO.Path.GetExtension(filePath);
string temp = filePath.Substring(0, filePath.Length - extension.Length)
+ i.ToString();
string FilePath = temp + extension;
if (!File.Exists(FilePath))
{
for (int x = 0; x < newFiles[i]; x++)
{
DataWriter(Reader.ReadLine(), FilePath);
}
}
else
{
return;
}
}
}
}
public void DataWriter(string rowData, string filePath)
{
bool appendData = true;
using (StreamWriter sr = new StreamWriter(filePath, appendData))
{
{
sr.WriteLine(rowData);
}
}
}
Thanks for your help.

You haven't made it very clear, but I'm assuming that the value of each element of the newFiles array is the number of lines to copy from the original into that file. Note that currently you don't detect the situation where there's either extra data at the end of the input file, or it's shorter than expected. I suspect you want something like this:
public void SplitFiles(int[] newFiles, string inputFile)
{
string baseName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(inputFile);
string extension = Path.GetExtension(inputFile);
using (TextReader reader = File.OpenText(inputFile))
{
for (int i = 0; i < newFiles.Length; i++)
{
string outputFile = baseName + i + extension;
if (File.Exists(outputFile))
{
// Better than silently returning, I'd suggest...
throw new IOException("File already exists: " + outputFile);
}
int linesToCopy = newFiles[i];
using (TextWriter writer = File.CreateText(outputFile))
{
for (int j = 0; i < linesToCopy; j++)
{
string line = reader.ReadLine();
if (line == null)
{
return; // Premature end of input
}
writer.WriteLine(line);
}
}
}
}
}
Note that this still won't detect if there's any unconsumed input... it's not clear what you want to do in that situation.
One option for code clarity is to extract the middle of this into a separate method:
public void SplitFiles(int[] newFiles, string inputFile)
{
string baseName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(inputFile);
string extension = Path.GetExtension(inputFile);
using (TextReader reader = File.OpenText(inputFile))
{
for (int i = 0; i < newFiles.Length; i++)
{
string outputFile = baseName + i + extension;
// Could put this into the CopyLines method if you wanted
if (File.Exists(outputFile))
{
// Better than silently returning, I'd suggest...
throw new IOException("File already exists: " + outputFile);
}
CopyLines(reader, outputFile, newFiles[i]);
}
}
}
private static void CopyLines(TextReader reader, string outputFile, int count)
{
using (TextWriter writer = File.CreateText(outputFile))
{
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
string line = reader.ReadLine();
if (line == null)
{
return; // Premature end of input
}
writer.WriteLine(line);
}
}
}

There are utilities for splitting files that may outperform your solution - e.g. search for "split file by line".
If they don't suit, there are solutions for loading all the source file into memory and then writing out the files but that probably isn't appropriate given the size of the source file.
In terms of improving your code, a minor improvement would be the generation of the destination file path (and also clarifying the confusing between the source filePath you use and the destination files). You don't need to re-establish the source file extension each time in your loop.
The second improvement (and probably more significant improvement - as highlighted by commenters) is about how you write out the destination files - these seem to have a differing number of lines from the source (value in each newFiles entry) that you specify you want in individual destination files? So I'd suggest for each entry you read all the source file relevant to the next destination file, then output the destination rather than repeatedly opening a destination file. You could "gather" the lines in a StringBuilder/List etc - alternatively just write them directly out to the destination file (but only opening it once)
public void SplitFiles(int[] newFiles, string sourceFilePath, int processorCount)
{
string sourceDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(sourceFilePath);
string sourceFileName = System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(sourceFilePath);
string extension = System.IO.Path.GetExtension(sourceFilePath);
using (StreamReader Reader = new StreamReader(sourceFilePath))
{
for (int i = 0; i < newFiles.Length; i++)
{
string destinationFileNameWithExtension = string.Format("{0}{1}{2}", sourceFileName, i, extension);
string destinationFilePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(sourceDirectory, destinationFileNameWithExtension);
if (!File.Exists(destinationFilePath))
{
// Read all the lines relevant to this destination file
// and temporarily store them in memory
StringBuilder destinationText = new StringBuilder();
for (int x = 0; x < newFiles[i]; x++)
{
destinationText.Append(Reader.ReadLine());
}
DataWriter(destinationFilePath, destinationText.ToString());
}
else
{
return;
}
}
}
}
private static void DataWriter(string destinationFilePath, string content)
{
using (StreamWriter sr = new StreamWriter(destinationFilePath))
{
{
sr.Write(content);
}
}
}

I've recently had to do this for several hundred files under 2 GB each (up to 1.92 GB), and the fastest method I found (if you have the memory available) is StringBuilder. All the other methods I tried were painfully slow.
Please note that this is memory dependent. Adjust "CurrentPosition = 130000" accordingly.
string CurrentLine = String.Empty;
int CurrentPosition = 0;
int CurrentSplit = 0;
foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(#"C:\FilesToSplit"))
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(file))
{
while ((CurrentLine = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (CurrentPosition == 130000) // Or whatever you want to split by.
{
using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(#"C:\FilesToSplit\SplitFiles\" + Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(file) + "-" + CurrentSplit + "." + Path.GetExtension(file)))
{
// Append this line too, so we don't lose it.
sb.Append(CurrentLine);
// Write the StringBuilder contents
sw.Write(sb.ToString());
// Clear the StringBuilder buffer, so it doesn't get too big. You can adjust this based on your computer's available memory.
sb.Clear();
// Increment the CurrentSplit number.
CurrentSplit++;
// Reset the current line position. We've found 130,001 lines of text.
CurrentPosition = 0;
}
}
else
{
sb.Append(CurrentLine);
CurrentPosition++;
}
}
}
// Reset the integers at the end of each file check, otherwise it can quickly go out of order.
CurrentPosition = 0;
CurrentSplit = 0;
}