Find Position in text file

I have done a lot of searching for a code sample of reading a file line by line and extracting text based on its position but haven't come up with anything usefull. I can read each line with this:

Code:

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' Need to find the 1st and 10th position in the sample
' text file.
    Private Sub ReadFile()
        Dim oread As StreamReader = _
            File.OpenText("C:\sample.txt")
        While oread.Peek <> -1
            Debug.Write(oread.ReadLine() & vbNewLine)
        End While
        oread.Close()
    End Sub

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I have a text file that has no visable delimiter like a comman etc. The coloulmns are determined by the position in the file. For instance:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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M i k e S m i t h

The first name starts at position 1 and the last name starts at position 5 (I don't think it will line up right in the mock up above but that is the idea). Does anybody have a sample peice of code they could point me to?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FastEddie

Code:

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' Need to find the 1st and 10th position in the sample
' text file.

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Are you saying you want to find the characters that are in the 1st & 10th position of each line? I'm confused as to exactly what you're looking for...

Yes I am (looking to the 1st & 10th position of each line). There are columns in the file but it is based on position and not a delimiter.

I eventually need to import the file into SQL server so I need to import it directly (programmatically) based on position or create a delimiter insert it and use DTS to do the import.

You can use the .Substring method to find the characters at any position within a string...

nbrege thank you that worked great.

Code:

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    ' This did the trick
    Private Sub ReadFile()

        Dim oread As StreamReader = _
            File.OpenText("C:\member.txt")

        Dim sName As String = Nothing
        Dim sLName As String = Nothing

        While oread.Peek <> -1
            Dim myLine As String = (oread.ReadLine)
            sName = myLine.Substring(24, 34)
            sLName = myLine.Substring(58, 17)
            Debug.Write(sName & sLName & vbNewLine)
        End While

        oread.Close()

    End Sub

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