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Adding characters to an array list only if it does not already exist

The code below is supposed to read a text file and count all ASCII characters in the file and add up the frequency. Then, it has to write the character, ASCII value and frequency to an output file. The code is below:
class CharacterFrequency
{
char ch;
int frequency;
public char getCharacter()
{
return ch;
}
public void setCharacter(char ch)
{
this.ch = ch;
}
public int getfrequency()
{
return frequency;
}
public void setfrequency(int frequency)
{
this.frequency = frequency;
}
static void Main()
{
Console.WriteLine("Enter the file path");
var InputFileName = Console.ReadLine();
Console.WriteLine("Enter the outputfile name");
var OutputFileName = Console.ReadLine();
StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(OutputFileName);
string data = File.ReadAllText(InputFileName);
ArrayList al = new ArrayList();
//create two for loops to traverse through the arraylist and compare
for (int i = 0; i < data.Length; i++)
{
int k = 0;
int f = 0;
for (int j = 0; j < data.Length; j++)
{
if (data[i].Equals(data[j]))
{
f++;
}
}
if (!al.Contains(data[i]))
{
al.Add(data[i] + "(" + (int)data[i] + ")" + f + " ");
}
else
{
k++;
}
//i added the below if statement but it did not fix the issue
foreach (var item in al)
{
streamWriter.WriteLine(item);
}
}
streamWriter.Close();
}
}
The code compiles and runs perfectly fine, but the output file is not correct. It is adding letters that have already been reviewed. I've added an image with the output file showing the incorrect output it is creating. --> enter image description here
How do I check if a character already exists in the array list? The way I am using is not working properly and I have been working on this for a few weeks now to no success. I have tried using the debugger but this issue will not show up there as the code still runs and compiles correctly.

An ArrayList is not well suited for this task, and in fact ArrayLists are not really used anymore. If someone is telling you that you have to do this with an ArrayList
A dictionary would be a much better container for this data. You can use the character as the key, and the count as the value.
Here's one way to do this:
var inputPath = #"c:\temp\temp.txt";
var outputPath = #"c:\temp\results.txt";
var data = new Dictionary<char, int>();
// For each character in the file, add it to the dictionary
// or increment the count if it already exists
foreach (var character in File.ReadAllText(inputPath))
{
if (data.ContainsKey(character)) data[character]++;
else data.Add(character, 1);
}
// Create our results summary
var results = data.ToList()
.Select(item => $"{item.Key} ({(int) item.Key}) {item.Value}");
// Write results to output file
File.WriteAllLines(outputPath, results);
If you have to use an ArrayList (which no one ever uses anymore, but you say have you to for some reason), it would only be useful for storing the results but not keeping track of the counts.
One way to use an ArrayList would be in combination with the Linq extension methods Distinct and Count (first to find all distinct characters, and next to get the count of each one):
foreach (var chr in data.Distinct())
{
al.Add($"{chr} ({(int) chr}) {data.Count(c => c == chr)}");
}

Your algorithm works, but you are duplicating the output as you are writing to the file inside the loop, that is why you are seeing duplicates in the result. If you move the code outside the loop, it should be ok.
foreach (var item in al)
{
streamWriter.WriteLine(item);
}
I would suggest that your algorithm while correct will behave poorly for performance, you are doing too many unnecessary comparisons, perhaps you should read/check more about using dictionaries to store the results.

Using a for loop to iterate from an array to a list

I have a text file that is divided up into many sections, each about 10 or so lines long. I'm reading in the file using File.ReadAllLines into an array, one line per element of the array, and I'm then I'm trying to parse each section of the file to bring back just some of the data. I'm storing the results in a list, and hoping to export the list to csv ultimately.
My for loop is giving me trouble, as it loops through the right amount of times, but only pulls the data from the first section of the text file each time rather than pulling the data from the first section and then moving on and pulling the data from the next section. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong either in my for loop or for each loop. Any clues to help me solve this would be much appreciated! Thanks
David
My code so far:
namespace ParseAndExport
{
class Program
{
static readonly string sourcefile = #"Path";
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string[] readInLines = File.ReadAllLines(sourcefile);
int counter = 0;
int holderCPStart = counter + 3;//Changed Paths will be an different number of lines each time, but will always start 3 lines after the startDiv
/*Need to find the start of the section and the end of the section and parse the bit in between.
* Also need to identify the blank line that occurs in each section as it is essentially a divider too.*/
int startDiv = Array.FindIndex(readInLines, counter, hyphens72);
int blankLine = Array.FindIndex(readInLines, startDiv, emptyElement);
int endDiv = Array.FindIndex(readInLines, counter + 1, hyphens72);
List<string> results = new List<string>();
//Test to see if FindIndexes work. Results should be 0, 7, 9 for 1st section of sourcefile
/*Console.WriteLine(startDiv);
Console.WriteLine(blankLine);
Console.WriteLine(endDiv);*/
//Check how long the file is so that for testing we know how long the while loop should run for
//Console.WriteLine(readInLines.Length);
//sourcefile has 5255 lines (elements) in the array
for (int i = 0; i <= readInLines.Length; i++)
{
if (i == startDiv)
{
results = (readInLines[i + 1].Split('|').Select(p => p.Trim()).ToList());
string holderCP = string.Join(Environment.NewLine, readInLines, holderCPStart, (blankLine - holderCPStart - 1)).Trim();
results.Add(holderCP);
string comment = string.Join(" ", readInLines, blankLine + 1, (endDiv - (blankLine + 1)));//in case the comment is more than one line long
results.Add(comment);
i = i + 1;
}
else
{
i = i + 1;
}
foreach (string result in results)
{
Console.WriteLine(result);
}
//csvcontent.AppendLine("Revision Number, Author, Date, Time, Count of Lines, Changed Paths, Comments");
/* foreach (string result in results)
{
for (int x = 0; x <= results.Count(); x++)
{
StringBuilder csvcontent = new StringBuilder();
csvcontent.AppendLine(results[x] + "," + results[x + 1] + "," + results[x + 2] + "," + results[x + 3] + "," + results[x + 4] + "," + results[x + 5]);
x = x + 6;
string csvpath = #"addressforcsvfile";
File.AppendAllText(csvpath, csvcontent.ToString());
}
}*/
}
Console.ReadKey();
}
private static bool hyphens72(String h)
{
if (h == "------------------------------------------------------------------------")
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
private static bool emptyElement(String ee)
{
if (ee == "")
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
}
}

It looks like you are trying to grab all of the lines in a file that are not "------" and put them into a list of strings.
You can try this:
var lineswithoutdashes = readInLines.Where(x => x != hyphens72).Select(x => x).ToList();
Now you can take this list and do the split with a '|' to extract the fields you wanted

The logic seems wrong. There are issues with the code in itself also. I am unsure what precisely you're trying to do. Anyway, a few hints that I hope will help:
The if (i == startDiv) checks to see if I equals startDiv. I assume the logic that happens when this condition is met, is what you refer to as "pulls the data from the first section". That's correct, given you only run this code when I equals startDiv.
You increase the counter I inside the for loop, which in itself also increases the counter i.
If the issue in 2. wouldn't exists then I'd suggest to not do the same operation "i = i + 1" in both the true and false conditions of the if (i == startDiv).
Given I assume this file might actually be massive, it's probably a good idea to not store it in memory, but just read the file line by line and process line by line. There's currently no obvious reason why you'd want to consume this amount of memory, unless it's because of the convenience of this API "File.ReadAllLines(sourcefile)". I wouldn't be too scared to read the file like this:
Try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader (file))) {
String line;
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
// process the line.
}
}
You can skip the lines until you've passed where the line equals hyphens72.
Then for each line, you process the line with the code you provided in the true case of (i == startDiv), or at least, from what you described, this is what I assume you are trying to do.

int startDiv will return the line number that contains hyphens72.
So your current for loop will only copy to results for the single line that matches the calculated line number.
I guess you want to search the postion of startDiv in the current line?
const string hyphens72;
// loop over lines
for (var lineNumber = 0; lineNumber <= readInLines.Length; lineNumber++) {
string currentLine = readInLines[lineNumber];
int startDiv = currentLine.IndexOf(hyphens72);
// loop over characters in line
for (var charIndex = 0; charIndex < currentLine.Length; charIndex++) {
if (charIndex == startDiv) {
var currentCharacter = currentLine[charIndex];
// write to result ...
}
else {
continue; // skip this character
}
}
}

There are a several things which could be improved.
I would use ReadLines over File.ReadAllLines( because ReadAllLines reads all the lines at ones. ReadLines will stream it.
With the line results = (readInLines[i + 1].Split('|').Select(p => p.Trim()).ToList()); you're overwriting the previous results list. You'd better use results.AddRange() to add new results.
for (int i = 0; i <= readInLines.Length; i++) means when the length = 10 it will do 11 iterations. (1 too many) (remove the =)
Array.FindIndex(readInLines, counter, hyphens72); will do a scan. On large files it will take ages to completely read them and search in it. Try to touch a single line only ones.
I cannot test what you are doing, but here's a hint:
IEnumerable<string> readInLines = File.ReadLines(sourcefile);
bool started = false;
List<string> results = new List<string>();
foreach(var line in readInLines)
{
// skip empty lines
if(emptyElement(line))
continue;
// when dashes are found, flip a boolean to activate the reading mode.
if(hyphens72(line))
{
// flip state.. (start/end)
started != started;
}
if(started)
{
// I don't know what you are doing here precisely, do what you gotta do. ;-)
results.AddRange((line.Split('|').Select(p => p.Trim()).ToList()));
string holderCP = string.Join(Environment.NewLine, readInLines, holderCPStart, (blankLine - holderCPStart - 1)).Trim();
results.Add(holderCP);
string comment = string.Join(" ", readInLines, blankLine + 1, (endDiv - (blankLine + 1)));//in case the comment is more than one line long
results.Add(comment);
}
}
foreach (string result in results)
{
Console.WriteLine(result);
}

You might want to start with a class like this. I don't know whether each section begins with a row of hyphens, or if it's just in between. This should handle either scenario.
What this is going to do is take your giant list of strings (the lines in the file) and break it into chunks - each chunk is a set of lines (10 or so lines, according to your OP.)
The reason is that it's unnecessarily complicated to try to read the file, looking for the hyphens, and process the contents of the file at the same time. Instead, one class takes the input and breaks it into chunks. That's all it does.
Another class might read the file and pass its contents to this class to break them up. Then the output is the individual chunks of text.
Another class can then process those individual sections of 10 or so lines without having to worry about hyphens or what separates on chunk from another.
Now that each of these classes is doing its own thing, it's easier to write unit tests for each of them separately. You can test that your "processing" class receives an array of 10 or so lines and does whatever it's supposed to do with them.
public class TextSectionsParser
{
private readonly string _delimiter;
public TextSectionsParser(string delimiter)
{
_delimiter = delimiter;
}
public IEnumerable<IEnumerable<string>> ParseSections(IEnumerable<string> lines)
{
var result = new List<List<string>>();
var currentList = new List<string>();
foreach (var line in lines)
{
if (line == _delimiter)
{
if(currentList.Any())
result.Add(currentList);
currentList = new List<string>();
}
else
{
currentList.Add(line);
}
}
if (currentList.Any() && !result.Contains(currentList))
{
result.Add(currentList);
}
return result;
}
}

c# how to store values from a file in an array [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
C# parsing a text file and storing the values in an array
(3 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
I am trying to store values in an array from reading from a file. I have the reading from a file part but I can't get it to store in an array because it gives me an error "Value cannot be null" because after the loop the value of my variable becomes null and the array cannot be null. Here's what I have. And I realize that the for loop probably isn't in the correct spot so any help with where to put it would be great.
Program p = new Program();
int MAX = 50;
int[] grades = new int[MAX];
string environment = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal) + "\\";
string path = environment + "grades.txt";
StreamReader myFile = new StreamReader(path);
string input;
int count = 0;
do
{
input = myFile.ReadLine();
if (input != null)
{
WriteLine(input);
count++;
}
} while (input != null);
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
grades[i] = int.Parse(input);
}

You start the for loop just after exiting from the while loop. And the condition to exit from the while loop is true when input is null. Of course this is not well accepted by Int.Parse.
Instead you can use a single loop, taking in consideration that you don't want to loop more than 50 times otherwise you exceed the array dimensions
int count = 0;
while((input = myFile.ReadLine()) != null && count < 50)
{
WriteLine(input);
grades[count] = int.Parse(input);
count++;
}
However you can have a more flexible way to handle your input if you use a List<int> instead of an array of integers. In this way you don't have to check for the number of lines present in your file
List<int> grades = new List<int>();
while((input = myFile.ReadLine()) != null)
grades.Add(int.Parse(input));

if we want to get really condensed
var grades = File.ReadAllLines(path).Select(l=>Int.Parse(l)).ToArray();

Utilize the Path.Combine() to help you in concatenating paths.
string environment = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal);
String fullPath = Path.Combine(environment, "grades.txt");
int[] grades = File.ReadAllLines(fullPath).Select(p => int.Parse(p)).ToArray<int>();
Console.WriteLine(grades);
Refer to https://www.dotnetperls.com/file-readalllines on how to use File.ReadAllLines() its very handy.
I'm using LINQ here, which sometimes simplifies things. Even though it looks a bit intimidating now. We read all lines, the result of that is then parsed by selecting each one and converting it to an integer then outputting an array of integers and saving that to grades.

Program p = new Program();
int MAX = 50;
int[] grades = new int[MAX];
string environment = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal) + "\\";
string path = environment + "grades.txt";
using (StreamReader myFile = new StreamReader(path))
{
string input;
int count = 0;
while((!myFile.EndOfStream) && (count < MAX))
{
input = myFile.ReadLine();
if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(input))
{
WriteLine(input);
grades[count] = int.Parse(input);
count++;
}
}
}
You should definitely use the "using" pattern around your stream object. Got rid of the for-loop for you while maintaining mostly your code and style. Your issue was that you weren't using the input value before moving on to the next line. You only ever had the last value in your original code.

Issue with .NET String.Split

I'm attempting to parse a text file containing data that is being used on a remote FTP server. The data is delimited by an equals sign (=) and I'm attempting to load each row in to two columns in a DataGridView. The code I have written works fine except for when an equals character is thrown into the second column's value. When this happens, regardless of specifying the maximum count as being 2. I'd prefer not to change the delimiter if possible.
Here is the code that is being problematic:
dataGrid_FileContents.Rows.Clear();
char delimiter = '=';
StreamReader fileReader = new StreamReader(fileLocation);
String fileData = fileReader.ReadToEnd();
String[] rows = fileData.Split("\n".ToCharArray());
for(int i = 0; i < rows.Length; i++)
{
String str = rows[i];
String[] items = str.Split(new char[] { delimiter }, 1, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
if (items.Length == 2)
{
dataGrid_FileContents.Rows.Add(items[0], items[1]);
}
}
fileReader.Close();
And an example of the file being loaded:
boats=123
cats=234-f
cars==1
It works as intended for the first two rows and then ignores the last row as it ends up creating a String[] with 1 element and two String[]s with zero elements.

Try the following. It will capture the value before and after the first '=', correctly parsing the cars==1 scenario.
String[] items = str.Split(new char[] { delimiter }, 2, stringSplitOptions.None);

A different solution, if you want everything after the first equals then you could approach this problem using string.IndexOf
for(int i = 0; i < rows.Length; i++)
{
String str = rows[i];
int pos = str.IndexOf(delimiter);
if (pos != -1)
{
string first = str.Substring(0, pos-1);
string second = str.Substring(pos + 1);
dataGrid_FileContents.Rows.Add(first, second);
}
}

Just read all items delimeted by '=' in row.
Then iterate over items, and check, that item not empty, than use this prepared data to write
here illustrated snippet
http://dotnetfiddle.net/msVho2
and your snippet can be transformed to something like bellow
dataGrid_FileContents.Rows.Clear();
char delimiter = '=';
using(StreamReader fileReader = new StreamReader(fileLocation))
{
string[] data = new string[2];
while(true)
{
string row = fileReader.ReadLine();
if(row == null)
break;
string[] items = row.Split(delimiter);
int data_index = 0;
foreach(string item in items)
{
if(data_index >= data.Length)
{
//TODO: log warning
break;
}
if(!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(item))
{
data[data_index++] = item;
}
}
if(data_index < data.Length)
{
//TODO: log error, only 1 item in row
continue;
}
dataGrid_FileContents.Rows.Add(data[0], data[1]);
}
}

How to extgract an integer and a two dimensional integer array from a combination of both in C#

I have an input as
2:{{2,10},{6,4}}
I am reading this as
string input = Console.ReadLine();
Next this input has to be passed to a function
GetCount(int count, int[,] arr)
{
}
How can I do so using C#?
Thanks

You could use RegularExpressions for extracting in an easy way each token of your input string. In the following example, support for extra spaces is included also (the \s* in the regular expressions).
Remember that always is a great idea to give a class the responsibility of parsing (in this example) rather than taking an procedural approach.
All the relevant lines are commented for better understanding.
Finally, i tested this and worked with the provided sample input strings.
using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
namespace IntPairArrayParserDemo
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var input = "2:{{2,10},{6,4}}";
ParseAndPrintArray(input);
var anotherInput = "2 : { { 2 , 10 } , { 6 , 4 } }";
ParseAndPrintArray(anotherInput);
}
private static void ParseAndPrintArray(string input)
{
Console.WriteLine("Parsing array {0}...", input);
var array = IntPairArrayParser.Parse(input);
var pairCount = array.GetLength(0);
for (var i = 0; i < pairCount; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine("Pair found: {0},{1}", array[i, 0], array[i, 1]);
}
Console.WriteLine();
}
}
internal static class IntPairArrayParser
{
public static int[,] Parse(string input)
{
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(input)) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("input");
// parse array length from string
var length = ParseLength(input);
// create the array that will hold all the parsed elements
var result = new int[length, 2];
// parse array elements from input
ParseAndStoreElements(input, result);
return result;
}
private static void ParseAndStoreElements(string input, int[,] array)
{
// get the length of the first dimension of the array
var expectedElementCount = array.GetLength(0);
// parse array elements
var elementMatches = Regex.Matches(input, #"{\s*(\d+)\s*,\s*(\d+)\s*}");
// validate that the number of elements present in input is corrent
if (expectedElementCount != elementMatches.Count)
{
var errorMessage = string.Format("Array should have {0} elements. It actually has {1} elements.", expectedElementCount, elementMatches.Count);
throw new ArgumentException(errorMessage, "input");
}
// parse array elements from input into array
for (var elementIndex = 0; elementIndex < expectedElementCount; elementIndex++)
{
ParseAndStoreElement(elementMatches[elementIndex], elementIndex, array);
}
}
private static void ParseAndStoreElement(Match match, int index, int[,] array)
{
// parse first and second element values from the match found
var first = int.Parse(match.Groups[1].Value);
var second = int.Parse(match.Groups[2].Value);
array[index, 0] = first;
array[index, 1] = second;
}
private static int ParseLength(string input)
{
// get the length from input and parse it as int
var lengthMatch = Regex.Match(input, #"(\d+)\s*:");
return int.Parse(lengthMatch.Groups[1].Value);
}
}
}

Not to do your work for you, you will first have to parse the whole string to find the individual integers, either using regular expressions or, as I would do it myself, the string.Split method. Then parse the substrings representing the individual integers with the int.Parse or the int.TryParse methods.

I doubt you're going to get a serious parsing answer for your custom format. If you NEED to have the value inputted that way, I'd look up some info on regular expressions. If that's not powerful enough for you, there are some fairly convienient parser-generators you can use.
Alternatively, the much more realistic idea would be something like this:
(NOTE: Haven't tried this at all... didn't even put it in VS... but this is the idea...)
int rows = 0;
string rowsInput = "";
do {
Console.Write("Number of rows:");
rowsInput = Console.ReadLine();
} while (!Int32.TryParse(rowsInput, out rows);
int columns = 0;
string columnsInput = "";
do {
Console.Write("Number of columns:");
string columnsInput = Console.ReadLine();
} while (!Int32.TryParse(columnsInput, out columns);
List<List<int>> values = new List<List<int>>();
for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++)
{
bool validInput = false;
do {
Console.Write(String.Format("Enter comma-delimited integers for row #{0}:", i.ToString()));
string row = Console.ReadLine();
string[] items = row.split(',');
int temp;
validInput = (items.Length == columns) && (from item in items where !Int32.TryParse(item, out temp) select item).count() == 0;
if (validInput)
{
values.add(
(from item in items select Convert.ToInt32(item)).ToList()
);
}
} while (!validInput);
}