streamWrite doesn't work - c#

I'm trying to read file into a string and rewrite that string into a new file, but there is a small check, if the current character is one of special characters that I want to rewrite.
I've debugged it, and the code seems to work fine, but the output file is empty.. I think I'm missing something... but what?
StreamWriter file = new StreamWriter(newname, true);
char current;
int j;
string CyrAlph = "йцукен";
string LatAlph = "ysuken";
string text = File.ReadAllText(filename);
for (int i = 0; i < text.Length; i++)
{
if (CyrAlph.IndexOf(text[i]) != -1)
{
j = CyrAlph.IndexOf(text[i]);
current = LatAlph[j];
}
else current = text[i];
file.Write(current);
}

What happens if you set file.AutoFlush = true after your StreamWriter instantiation or call file.Close at the end of writing everything or you can instantiate your StreamWriter in a using statement. My guess is that it is empty because the buffer needs flushed

You're missing a stream flush. The standard pattern is to add a using statement around the allocation of the StreamWriter. That also takes care of closing the file and releasing the operating system's file handle:
using (StreamWriter file = new StreamWriter(path, true))
{
// Work with your file here
} // After this block, you have "disposed" of the file object.
// That takes care of flushing the stream and releasing the file handle
The using statement has the added benefit, over explicitly closing the stream, of disposing the stream correctly even in the case of an exception within the block.

StreamWriter implements IDisposable. You "have" to Dispose it after using it. To do so, use a using statement. This will automatically flushes and closes the stream at the end of the using body.
using(StreamWriter file = new StreamWriter(newname,true))
{
char current;
int j;
string CyrAlph="йцукен";
string LatAlph = "ysuken";
string text = File.ReadAllText(filename);
for (int i = 0; i < text.Length; i++)
{
if (CyrAlph.IndexOf(text[i]) != -1)
{
j=CyrAlph.IndexOf(text[i]);
current = LatAlph[j];
}
else current=text[i];
file.Write(current);
}
}

Related

C# Combine Archive Divided Into One File

Code:
public void mergeFiles(string dir)
{
for (int i = 0; i < parts; i++)
{
if (!File.Exists(dir))
{
File.Create(dir).Close();
}
var output = File.Open(dir, FileMode.Open);
var input = File.Open(dir + ".part" + (i + 1), FileMode.Open);
input.CopyTo(output);
output.Close();
input.Close();
File.Delete(dir + ".part" + (i + 1));
}
}
dir variable is for example /path/file.txt.gz
I have a file packed into a .gz archive. This archive is divided into e.g. 8 parts and I want to get this file.
The problem is that I don't know how to combine these files "file.gz.part1..." to extract them later.
When I use the above function, the archive is corrupted.
I have been struggling with it for a week, looking on the Internet, but this is the best solution I have found and it does not work.
Anyone have any advice on how to combine archive parts into one file?
Your code has a few problems. If you look at the documentation for System.IO.Stream.Close you will see the following remark (emphasis mine):
Closes the current stream and releases any resources (such as sockets and file handles) associated with the current stream. Instead of calling this method, ensure that the stream is properly disposed.
So, per the docs, you want to dispose your streams rather than calling close directly (I'll come back to that in a second). Ignoring that, your main problem lies here:
var output = File.Open(dir, FileMode.Open);
You're using FileMode.Open for your output file. Again from the docs:
Specifies that the operating system should open an existing file. The ability to open the file is dependent on the value specified by the FileAccess enumeration. A FileNotFoundException exception is thrown if the file does not exist.
That's opening a stream at the beginning of the file. So, you're writing each partial file over the beginning of your output file repeatedly. I'm sure you noticed that your combined file size was only as large as the largest partial file. Take a look at FileMode.Append on the other hand:
Opens the file if it exists and seeks to the end of the file, or creates a new file. This requires Append permission. FileMode.Append can be used only in conjunction with FileAccess.Write. Trying to seek to a position before the end of the file throws an IOException exception, and any attempt to read fails and throws a NotSupportedException exception.
OK - but backing up even a step further, this:
if (!File.Exists(dir))
{
File.Create(dir).Close();
}
var output = File.Open(dir, FileMode.Open);
... is ineffecient. Why would we check for the file existing n number of times, then open/close it n number of times? We can just create the file as the first step, and leave that output stream open until we have appended all of our data to it.
So, how would we refactor your code to use IDisposable while fixing your bug? Check out the using statement. Putting all of this together, your code might look like this:
public void mergeFiles(string dir)
{
using (FileStream combinedFile = File.Create(dir))
{
for (int i = 0; i < parts; i++)
{
// Since this string is referenced more than once, capture as a
// variable to lower risk of copy/paste errors.
var splitFileName = dir + ".part" + (i + 1);
using (FileStream filePart = File.Open(splitFileName, FileMode.Open))
{
filePart.CopyTo(combinedFile);
}
// Note that it's safe to delete the file now, because our filePart
// stream has been disposed as it is out of scope.
File.Delete(splitFileName);
}
}
}
Give that a try. And here's an entire working program with a contrived example that you can past into a new console app and run:
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
namespace temp_test
{
class Program
{
static int parts = 10;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// First we will generate some dummy files.
generateFiles();
// Next, open files and combine.
combineFiles();
}
/// <summary>
/// A contived example to generate some files.
/// </summary>
static void generateFiles()
{
for (int i = 0; i < parts; i++)
{
using (FileStream newFile = File.Create("splitfile.part" + i))
{
byte[] info = new UTF8Encoding(true).GetBytes($"This is File # ${i.ToString()}");
newFile.Write(info);
}
}
}
/// <summary>
/// A contived example to combine our files.
/// </summary>
static void combineFiles()
{
using (FileStream combinedFile = File.Create("combined"))
{
for (int i = 0; i < parts; i++)
{
var splitFileName = "splitfile.part" + i;
using (FileStream filePart = File.Open(splitFileName, FileMode.Open))
{
filePart.CopyTo(combinedFile);
}
// Note that it's safe to delete the file now, because our filePart
// stream has been disposed as it is out of scope.
File.Delete(splitFileName);
}
}
}
}
}
Good luck and welcome to StackOverflow!

c#: Getting line count from MemoryStream/StreamWriter

I use the following code to write log file:
Encoding enc = Encoding.GetEncoding(932);
MemoryStream msLog = new MemoryStream();
StreamWriter swLog = new StreamWriter(msLog, enc);
swLog.WriteLine("Line Number,Error,Additional Information"); //log header
After some complex processing I'd like to know whether there any log line was added except the header. Obviously, one way is to set some boolean variable to true whenever I use swLog.WriteLine(), but because of long and complex code I'd like to avoid this approach. How can I easily check line count of memory stream?
As you noted, there are other better ways to do this. However, here is a direct answer to your question:
First, make sure that the StreamWriter has flushed the data into the stream like this:
swLog.Flush();
Then, you can use the following method to detect if the MemoryStream has more than one line:
private bool HasMoreThanNumberOfLines(Stream stream, Encoding enc, int number_of_lines)
{
long current_position = stream.Position;
stream.Position = 0;
try
{
using(StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(stream, enc, true, 1024, true))
{
for (int i = 0; i < number_of_lines + 1 ; i++)
{
string line = sr.ReadLine();
if (line == null)
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
finally
{
stream.Position = current_position;
}
}
Please note that I am using a special constructor of StreamReader to make sure that it does not close the underlying stream (stream) when it is disposed of.
Notice also how this method saves the current position of the stream, and then restores it after executing its logic so that the StreamWriter would continue to work normally.
You can use this method like this:
var has_another_line = HasMoreThanNumberOfLines(msLog, enc, 1);
Please note that this is not thread-safe. I am assuming that the stream will be accessed by a single thread at any point in time. You would need to put some locks to make it thread-safe.

How to close file that has been read

So im trying to close a file (transactions.txt) that has been open that i've used to read into a textbox and now I want to save back to the file but the problem debug says that the file is in use so I need to find a way to close it. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks!
SearchID = textBox1.Text;
string ID = SearchID.ToString();
bool idFound = false;
int count = 0;
foreach (var line in File.ReadLines("transactions.txt"))
{
//listView1.Items.Add(line);
if (line.Contains(ID))
{
idFound = true;
}
//Displays Transactions if the variable SearchID is found.
if (idFound && count < 8)
{
textBox2.Text += line + "\r\n";
count++;
}
}
}
private void SaveEditedTransaction()
{
SearchID = textBox1.Text;
string ID = SearchID.ToString();
bool idFound = false;
int count = 0;
foreach (var lines in File.ReadLines("transactions.txt"))
{
//listView1.Items.Add(line);
if (lines.Contains(ID))
{
idFound = true;
}
if (idFound)
{
string edited = File.ReadAllText("transactions.txt");
edited = edited.Replace(lines, textBox2.Text);
File.WriteAllText("Transactions.txt", edited);
}
The problem here is that File.ReadLines keeps the file open while you read it, since you've put the call to write new text to it inside the loop, the file is still open.
Instead I would simply break out of the loop when you find the id, and then put the if-statement that writes to the file outside the loop.
This, however, means that you will also need to maintain which line to replace in.
So actually, instead I would switch to using File.ReadAllLines. This reads the entire file into memory, and closes it, before the loop starts.
Now, pragmatic minds might argue that if you have a lot of text in that text file, File.ReadLines (that you're currently using) will use a lot less memory than File.ReadAllLines (that I am suggesting you should use), but if that's the case then you should switch to a database, which would be much more suited to your purpose anyway. It is, however, a bit of an overkill for a toy project with 5 lines in that file.
Use StreamReader directly with the using statement, for example:
var lines = new List<string>();
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(#"C:\test.txt")) {
var line = reader.ReadLine();
while (line != null) {
lines.Add(line);
line = reader.ReadLine();
}
}
By using the using statement the StreamReader instance will automatically be disposed of after it's done with it.
You can try with this:
File.WriteAllLines(
"transactions.txt",
File.ReadAllLines("transactions.txt")
.Select(x => x.Contains(ID) ? textBox2.Text : x));
It works fine, but if the file is big you have to find other solutions.
You can use the StreamReader class instead of the methods of the File class. In this way you can use, Stream.Close() and Stream.Dispose().

How can I split a big text file into smaller file?

I have a big file with some text, and I want to split it into smaller files.
In this example, What I do:
I open a text file let's say with 10 000 lines into it
I set a number of package=300 here, which means, that's the small file limit, once a small file has 300 lines into it, close it, open a new file for writing for example (package2).
Same, as step 2.
You already know
Here is the code from my function that should do that. The ideea (what I dont' know) is how to close, and open a new file once it has reached the 300 limit (in our case here).
Let me show you what I'm talking about:
int nr = 1;
package=textBox1.Text;//how many lines/file (small file)
string packnr = nr.ToString();
string filer=package+"Pack-"+packnr+"+_"+date2+".txt";//name of small file/s
int packtester = 0;
int package= 300;
StreamReader freader = new StreamReader("bigfile.txt");
StreamWriter pak = new StreamWriter(filer);
while ((line = freader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (packtester < package)
{
pak.WriteLine(line);//writing line to small file
packtester++;//increasing the lines of small file
}
else if (packtester == package)//in this example, checking if the lines
//written, got to 300
{
packtester = 0;
pak.Close();//closing the file
nr++;//nr++ -> just for file name to be Pack-2;
packnr = nr.ToString();
StreamWriter pak = new StreamWriter(package + "Pack-" + packnr + "+_" + date2 + ".txt");
}
}
I get this errors:
Cannot use local variable 'pak' before it is declared
A local variable named 'pak' cannot be declared in this scope because it would give a different meaning to 'pak', which is already used in a 'parent or current' scope to denote something else
Try this:
public void SplitFile()
{
int nr = 1;
int package = 300;
DateTime date2 = DateTime.Now;
int packtester = 0;
using (var freader = new StreamReader("bigfile.txt"))
{
StreamWriter pak = null;
try
{
pak = new StreamWriter(GetPackFilename(package, nr, date2), false);
string line;
while ((line = freader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (packtester < package)
{
pak.WriteLine(line); //writing line to small file
packtester++; //increasing the lines of small file
}
else
{
pak.Flush();
pak.Close(); //closing the file
packtester = 0;
nr++; //nr++ -> just for file name to be Pack-2;
pak = new StreamWriter(GetPackFilename(package, nr, date2), false);
}
}
}
finally
{
if(pak != null)
{
pak.Dispose();
}
}
}
}
private string GetPackFilename(int package, int nr, DateTime date2)
{
return string.Format("{0}Pack-{1}+_{2}.txt", package, nr, date2);
}
Logrotate can do this automatically for you. Years have been put into it and it's what people trust to handle their sometimes very large webserver logs.
Note that the code, as written, will not compile because you define the variable pak more than once. It should otherwise function, though it has some room for improvement.
When working with files, my suggestion and the general norm is to wrap your code in a using block, which is basically syntactic sugar built on top of a finally clause:
using (var stream = File.Open("C:\hi.txt"))
{
//write your code here. When this block is exited, stream will be disposed.
}
Is equivalent to:
try
{
var stream = File.Open(#"C:\hi.txt");
}
finally
{
stream.Dispose();
}
In addition, when working with files, always prefer opening file streams using very specific permissions and modes as opposed to using the more sparse constructors that assume some default options. For example:
var stream = new StreamWriter(File.Open(#"c:\hi.txt", FileMode.CreateNew, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.Read));
This will guarantee, for example, that files should not be overwritten -- instead, we assume that the file we want to open doesn't exist yet.
Oh, and instead of using the check you perform, I suggest using the EndOfStream property of the StreamReader object.
This code looks like it closes the stream and re-opens a new stream when you hit 300 lines. What exactly doesn't work in this code?
One thing you'll want to add is a final close (probably with a check so it doesn't try to close an already closed stream) in case you don't have an even multiple of 300 lines.
EDIT:
Due to your edit I see your problem. You don't need to redeclare pak in the last line of code, simply reinitialize it to another streamwriter.
(I don't remember if that is disposable but if it is you probably should do that before making a new one).
StreamWriter pak = new StreamWriter(package + "Pack-" + packnr + "+_" + date2 + ".txt");
becomes
pak = new StreamWriter(package + "Pack-" + packnr + "+_" + date2 + ".txt");

Why StreamReader.EndOfStream property change the BaseStream.Position value

I wrote this small program which reads every 5th character from Random.txt
In random.txt I have one line of text: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPRST. I got the expected result:
Position of A is 0
Position of F is 5
Position of K is 10
Position of P is 15
Here is the code:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
StreamReader fp;
int n;
fp = new StreamReader("d:\\RANDOM.txt");
long previousBSposition = fp.BaseStream.Position;
//In this point BaseStream.Position is 0, as expected
n = 0;
while (!fp.EndOfStream)
{
//After !fp.EndOfStream were executed, BaseStream.Position is changed to 19,
//so I have to reset it to a previous position :S
fp.BaseStream.Seek(previousBSposition, SeekOrigin.Begin);
Console.WriteLine("Position of " + Convert.ToChar(fp.Read()) + " is " + fp.BaseStream.Position);
n = n + 5;
fp.DiscardBufferedData();
fp.BaseStream.Seek(n, SeekOrigin.Begin);
previousBSposition = fp.BaseStream.Position;
}
}
My question is, why after line while (!fp.EndOfStream) BaseStream.Position is changed to 19, e.g. end of a BaseStream. I expected, obviously wrong, that BaseStream.Position will stay the same when I call EndOfStream check?
Thanks.
Thre only certain way to find out whether a Stream is at its end is to actually read something from it and check whether the return value is 0. (StreamReader has another way – checking its internal buffer, but you correctly don't let it do that by calling DiscardBufferedData.)
So, EndOfStream has to read at least one byte from the base stream. And since reading byte by byte is inefficient, it reads more. That's the reason why the call to EndOfStream changes the position to the end (it woulnd't be the end of file for bigger files).
It seems you don't actually need to use StreamReader, so you should use Stream (or specifically FileStream) directly:
using (Stream fp = new FileStream(#"d:\RANDOM.txt", FileMode.Open))
{
int n = 0;
while (true)
{
int read = fp.ReadByte();
if (read == -1)
break;
char c = (char)read;
Console.WriteLine("Position of {0} is {1}.", c, fp.Position);
n += 5;
fp.Position = n;
}
}
(I'm not sure what does setting the position beyond the end of file do in this situation, you may need to add a check for that.)
The base stream's Position property refers to the position of the last read byte in the buffer, not the actual position of the StreamReader's cursor.
You are right and I could reproduce your issue as well, anyway according to (MSDN: Read Text from a File) the proper way to read a text file with a StreamReader is the following, not yours (this also always closes and disposes the stream by using a using block):
try
{
// Create an instance of StreamReader to read from a file.
// The using statement also closes the StreamReader.
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("TestFile.txt"))
{
String line;
// Read and display lines from the file until the end of
// the file is reached.
while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
{
Console.WriteLine(line);
}
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
// Let the user know what went wrong.
Console.WriteLine("The file could not be read:");
Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
}

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