How to find a word in a text file and extract the word before ?

[Chenzen]

Hello Everyone,

I'm currently working on a twinBasic script that reads lines from a text file and extracts specific information. However, I'm encountering an issue where my script always returns the first word of the file, regardless of the content.

Here's the context and the issue:

The Goal:
I want to read a file line by line and extract the first word of the line that contains a specific substring (fileName).

The output_file Content:
Here is an example of what the content of my output_file.txt looks like:

1PAoTP-3tBSlja3pn6L8SJK8XTpE3ptPV   Programmation                               folder               2024-06-03 21:24:53
1ragISYh9uD9s2mjLA2IwUsmJKWnX5BRC   Wow                                         folder               2024-01-26 20:59:49
1huU9Li_zW08bPhuvO0F-wKYBd5MVgoCR   Cheat-Engine                                folder               2024-01-03 21:25:21
1wPkQjWsm7o_XByAMC7vcFl9zV-qiU00R   Roms                                        folder               2018-04-02 17:37:59
1stuIK4gHaA4q3nceMhngebPj0IJqzR7a   ISS                                         folder               2023-02-03 12:32:58
1Ts32d7S_EC3QoAws6BmiyM-eDs-o0Npr   Perso                                       folder               2022-07-03 11:12:36
1FckLxGQu_FVigCm3swezsLm4M3tcKmWp   save zenfone                                folder               2021-11-30 14:20:51
1I3VYvZobFuqlcnLKjxNVmcA-ZOq_p7H5   Estavayer                                   folder               2021-06-27 10:20:11
1giXmE8VcE_gB4hY2fxNwfJbKZIHiCn4H   Musique                                     folder               2019-10-03 20:44:27
1B8qkyxMwLRe-ldTx75biUzuYX-rFFS5S   KeePass                                     folder               2019-07-31 18:53:46
0BzOrTyY65ohMazJRZVNGSkpiRnM        Securité compte                             folder               2016-09-27 01:54:28
0BzOrTyY65ohMMUNIOVNZNG1oQnc        Autres documents                            folder               2016-09-27 01:52:18
0BzOrTyY65ohMenhLM1RDME9QeVk        Sono                                        folder               2016-09-27 01:50:44
1rsMn8QtCxvn5xKpNBpumeKbLoRMy8Pim   DBXV2.sav                                   regular   1.2 MB     2024-07-21 17:41:17
1-QWYY_amb2XY1ppYJKzHj5k4MAmBDin1   RPGMaker XP.rar                             regular   23 MB      2024-05-28 20:26:13

its a list of my google drive files and i only need the hash/ID associated with DBXV2.sav which is "1rsMn8QtCxvn5xKpNBpumeKbLoRMy8Pim"

I came up with this function, with the help of chatgpt(I know i know ...)

Public Function GetFileID(fileName As String) As String
      Dim fileID As String
      Dim line As String
      Dim fileNumber As Integer
      Dim filePath As String
      Dim pos As Integer
    
      filePath = "D:\VB6\twinBASIC_IDE_BETA_586\gdrive_output.txt"
      fileNumber = FreeFile

      On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
    
      Open filePath For Input As #fileNumber
       Do While Not EOF(fileNumber)
          Line Input #fileNumber, line
          If InStr(line, fileName) > 0 Then
            pos = InStr(line, " ")
            If pos > 0 Then
                fileID = Trim(Left(line, pos - 1))
                Exit Do
            End If
        End If
      Loop
      Close fileNumber

      GetFileID = fileID
      Exit Function

  ErrorHandler:
      MsgBox "Error: " & Err.Description, vbCritical
      If fileNumber > 0 Then Close fileNumber
      GetFileID = ""
  End Function

And i call it like this :

fileID = GetFileID("DBXV2.sav")


however it always return the first word of the document.

Can someone explain me what is wrong here ? Thanks guys.

[fan2006]

seems to be a file encoding related issue.

[fafalone]

fan2006 is right I believe; the function works for me with plain ANSI; tB supports other encodings for input but you need to specify, e.g. Open FilePath For Input Encoding utf-16 As #fileNumber

For the full list of supported encodings see here.

[Chenzen]

Thanks guys i managed to figured it out ! It was because the file was using "LF" line ending

[Zvoni]

Irrespective of the Issue with LF

There is a unnecessary code here

Do While Not EOF(fileNumber)
          Line Input #fileNumber, line
          If InStr(line, fileName) > 0 Then
            pos = InStr(line, " ")
            If pos > 0 Then
                fileID = Trim(Left(line, pos - 1))
                Exit Do
            End If
        End If
      Loop

shorter

Do While Not EOF(fileNumber)
   Line Input #fileNumber, line
   pos = InStr(line, fileName)
   If pos > 0 Then
     fileID = Trim(Left(line, pos - 1))
     Exit Do
   End If
Loop