Search for words in a file. C#

Question

I am trying to search for a word in a text file that I am reading into C#.

As of right now it keeps on showing the word is at line zero when it is not.

What am I doing wrong in the code?

Also, how would I make it count the word that I search for so that it can show the amount of occurrence?

        string line;
        int counter = 0;

        Console.WriteLine("Enter a word to search for: ");
        var text = Console.ReadLine();

        string file = "newfile.txt";
        StreamReader myFile = new StreamReader(file);

        Console.WriteLine("\n");

        while ( (line = myFile.ReadLine()) != null )
        {
            if(line.Contains(text))
            {
                break;
            }
            counter++;
        }
        Console.WriteLine("Line number: {0}", counter);

        myFile.Close();
        Console.ReadLine();

Is there a file named "newfile.txt" in the current directory? Have you tried providing an absolute path? — Asad Saeeduddin, Nov 28 '15 at 01:23
@AsadSaeeduddin yes, there is a file. I was able to display it in windows console. — Lebron Jamess, Nov 28 '15 at 01:26
Are you sure the text you're entering isn't in the first line? — Asad Saeeduddin, Nov 28 '15 at 01:27
If the reported line is 0, there are three possibilities. 1. Your file is empty 2. Your file contains a single line and the text is found 3. The text is found at the first line — Oguz Ozgul, Nov 28 '15 at 01:27
I made a text file form note pad and just pressed enter to go to the next line. — Lebron Jamess, Nov 28 '15 at 01:30
The StreamReader.ReadLine works well with \n (Unix line ending) so I eliminate that possibility. — Oguz Ozgul, Nov 28 '15 at 01:30
Please create a text file with some lines of text in it would you? The code is fine, but for the sake of user experience, you can report the line by incrementing it by 1 (end-users don't understand line 0 and will go to line 32 if you report 32 while the line in a text editor will be 33) — Oguz Ozgul, Nov 28 '15 at 01:33
@LebronJamess So you created a text file with an empty line, then entered an empty line into your program, then became confused as to why the program found your input in the first line? — Asad Saeeduddin, Nov 28 '15 at 01:46
No, I guess the formatting in notepad is specific. So, I had to make it correct in order for it to be read in correctly. — Lebron Jamess, Nov 28 '15 at 01:50

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 28 '15 at 01:50

1

To solve the other part of your question... "how to find all the occurrences".

Add a new variable to store the number found:

int found = 0;

Rework your while loop to not break out - but report where you found it and increase your found count. After the while loop summarise your findings.

while ((line = myFile.ReadLine()) != null)
{
    // Increment the line counter first so it's not zero indexed
    counter++;

    // If it contains the text tell us what line and increase found
    // Note: No need to break out of the code since we want to find all of them this time
    if (line.Contains(text))
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Found on line number: {0}", counter);
        found++;
    }
}

Console.WriteLine("A total of {0} occurences found", found);

answered Nov 28 '15 at 01:50

Robert Pilcher

376
1
10

Oh, nice that was what I was coding towards. One question, is there a way to find a word and how much it occurs like the letter "the' appearing in the word their? – Lebron Jamess Nov 28 '15 at 02:04
How would i make it so that it is not case sensitive as well? – Lebron Jamess Nov 28 '15 at 02:16
You could probably code around all the possible for finding if this is a complete word... like check that there's a space or punctuation following the match (use `IndexOf()` and `Substring()`). Similarly you can modify the case of the string with `ToLower()` - but it begins to get complicated. I'd recommend that you take a look at what RegEx can do for you... – Robert Pilcher Nov 28 '15 at 02:19
I'm trying Regex, but there is a red underline under it. Is there any extra thing I needed to add to use it? – Lebron Jamess Nov 28 '15 at 02:30
Add `using System.Text.RegularExpressions;`. There are loads of RegEx examples out there... try [this URL](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1209049/c-regex-match-whole-words) or [this set of examples](http://www.dotnetperls.com/regex-match) for some general pointers. – Robert Pilcher Nov 28 '15 at 02:35

Search for words in a file. C#

1 Answers1