[resolved]

[meight]

Hi, it's basically a parser.

I will be getting text from a text file and putting it into a textbox on my form for manipulation. I'll give you an example of the text I need to grab from it and what the text would look like.

*** Chat Log Opened: Mon Aug 02 08:53:02 2010

[08:53:02]  To stop logging, type /chatlog again.

[08:54:30] @@name sends, "message"
[08:54:30] @@name sends, "message"

*** Chat Log Closed: Mon Aug 02 08:54:33 2010

The parts I've colored red and underlined are the parts I need to take from the text and nothing else. The problem is that the name part (which always appears after the "@@" will always be different in length and so will the "message" part (which appears always in quote marks, just like the "@@").

I've never really worked with text manipulation or trying to extract certain bits of text before, so any help will be appreciated, i'm pretty sure it's a easy job but I'm not sure of the commands.

The overall thing is, I need to search if a certain part of text is in the message part, if not move on until the next existence, if it is, grab the name.

Cheers.

[cicatrix]

Here's a regex for you:

@@([\S]+)+\ssends,\s"(.+)"

its first capturing group will correspond for name and the second one - the message

Now the grand question. What is regex?
RegEx comes from Regular Expressions - a very powerful tool for text search using fuzzy search criteria (like yours).
To learn more, you can visit this site: http://www.regular-expressions.info/
The basics about RegEx can be also read at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression

And finally, to use Regular Expressions in your VB application, you will need a VS.Net regex engine which is accessible through System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace.

Here you can find a complete syntax reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...cs(VS.80).aspx

[meight]

Here's a regex for you:

@@([\S]+)+\ssends,\s"(.+)"

its first capturing group will correspond for name and the second one - the message

Now the grand question. What is regex?
RegEx comes from Regular Expressions - a very powerful tool for text search using fuzzy search criteria (like yours).
To learn more, you can visit this site: http://www.regular-expressions.info/
The basics about RegEx can be also read at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression

And finally, to use Regular Expressions in your VB application, you will need a VS.Net regex engine which is accessible through System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace.

Here you can find a complete syntax reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...cs(VS.80).aspx

Ty for reply, is there another way?

For one it looks very hard to learn, also the expression you gave me doesn't seem to work when I actually tried it.

[Joacim Andersson]

The pattern given by cicatrix worked perfect when I tried it. Here's a function (that assumes you have imported the System.Text.RegularExpression namespace) that will return a List(Of String) where each string looks as follows (without the quotes) "name: message". You should easily be able to change that into any kind of output.

  Private Function GetConversation(ByVal text As String) As List(Of String)
    Dim regex As New Regex("@@([\S]+)+\ssends,\s""(.+)""")
    Dim matches = regex.Matches(text)
    Dim list As New List(Of String)
    For Each m As Match In matches
      list.Add(m.Groups(1).Value & ": " & m.Groups(2).Value)
    Next
    Return list
  End Function

[cicatrix]

The regex works fine. I prepared a sample project with this expression (VS2010)
I used a listview to display the results.

The code itself is very simple:

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
 
Public Class Form1
 
    Private Sub txtInput_TextChanged(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles txtInput.TextChanged
 
        Dim pattern = "@@([\S]+)+\ssends,\s""(.+)"""
 
        For Each m As Match In Regex.Matches(txtInput.Text, pattern)
            Dim nme As String = m.Groups(1).Value
            Dim msg As String = m.Groups(2).Value
 
            Dim lvi As New ListViewItem(nme)
            lvi.SubItems.Add(msg)
            lvNames.Items.Add(lvi)
        Next
    End Sub
End Class

Just paste your log into the left textbox (txtInput) and see the results in the listview.