Reading text file

Hello Roger,

Thank you.

Although I understand some parts of your code, overall I'm not get in to it very well. Would you please explain each smaller loops?

Why don't you try this as a CSV file? You can change spaces with commas for example.

Then you can handle the file's elements more easy if they are numbers.

Just a suggestion...

Thanks, I'll think about it. But how to get the 2nd or the 3rd variable? I can't find any direct MQL4's function to do it.

devilian, what is exact file format? - as different ways to 'get at data'

.

IF format = 3 white space delimited numbers, terminated with CRLF

eg:

100 200 300

123 456 789

...

as an example:

THEN consider that eg: a function that is called with a number of 1|2|3 can read a "file record" and then return number from FileReadNumber() 1|2|3

The filePointer or next Byte to read from, will be mapped to the next "file record":

.

  int handle;
  int value;
  handle=FileOpen("filename.csv", FILE_CSV, ';');
  if(handle>0)
    {
     value=FileReadNumber(handle);  //IF can keep knowledge of current position in file or eg, file records are newLine delimited then each 3 reads gives a record..
     FileClose(handle);
    }

int handle, space,i,pos[];
string str,word;
handle=FileOpen("test.txt",FILE_READ);//try to open file
if(handle==-1)return(0);// if not exist
if(FileSize(handle)==0){FileClose(handle); return(0); } //if empty
while(!FileIsEnding(handle))//read file to the end by paragraph. if you have only one string, omit it
   {
   str=FileReadString(handle);//read one paragraph to the string variable
   if(str!="")//if string not empty
      {
      space=0;
      for(i=0;i<StringLen(str);i++)
         {
         if(StringGetChar(str,i)==32)// look for spaces (32) only
            {
            space++;//yes, we found one more space
            ArrayResize(pos,space);//increase array
            pos[space-1]=i;//write the number of space position to array
            }
         }//now we have array with numbers of positions of all spaces
      for(i=0;i<=space;i++)//start to read elements of string
         {
         if(i==0) word=StringSubstr(str,0,pos[0]);//the first element of string (in your case it is 100)
         else word=StringSubstr(str,pos[i-1]+1,pos[i]-pos[i-1]-1);//the rest of elements
         //analize your word. I mean you can calculate (StrToInteger or StrToDouble), print or collect to another array
          }
       }
   }
FileClose(handle); //close file
return(0);

Hello All,

@fjb, I'm not sure that I understand your explanation, but thank you.

@Roger, thank you for the explanation.

HelloAll,

I have another question, what if the text file's format is below :

---------------

100;200;300

101;201;301

102;202;302

---------------

Any help is appreciated

Thank you

You can treat it like a CSV file with delimeter ;

You open it this way:

int File = FileOpen("File.CSV", FILE_READ|FILE_CSV,';');

Thanks for the reply. But then how to save each value to a variable?

for example :

val1a=100

val1b=200

val2a=101

val2b=201

val3a=102

val3b=202

val3c=302

Roger's example above seems only for a paragraph, or until a new line feed.

Thanks