parsing

[CyberFunk Productions]

i really don't understand how to parse files. Heres what i want to do. lets say I want to parse a text file and look for the word 'birthday', then display what line its on, is this possible?, and how would i go about doing it, i've read up on a little but i don't get it.

[pekster]

Here are pieces you will need and what they do:

• FileOpen returns a file pointer to a file
• FileReadLine reads a requested line from a file
• While loops while a condition is true
• ExitLoop escapes a loop
• StringInStr finds a substring in a string
• MsgBox display a message to the user

We can combine them like this:

$serach = "my serach string"
$file = FileOpen("C:\my_textfile.txt")
If $file = -1 Then;error opening file
  MsgBox(0, "Fatal error", "Unable to open file... quitting")
  Exit
EndIf
$i = 1;set the line counter variable
While 1
  $line = FileReadLine($file, $i);get the current line and store to a var
  If @error Then ExitLoop;EOF reached with no success
  If StringInStr($line, $search) Then;we found the text, so tell user and exit
    MsgBox(0, "Text found", "The requested text was found on line " & $i)
    Exit
  EndIf
  $i = $i + 1
WEnd
MsgBox(0, "Text not found", "Sorry, your requested text was not found on any line")

[CyberFunk Productions]

wow, thats awsome, thanx, i'll work with this. It makes more sense now.