number of lines?

[99mel]

Hi everyone,

Is it possible to get the number of lines from a text file? Opening the file, looping and using 'Line Input' and adding one each time to a counter takes too long as it can be a file with half a million lines in.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Mel s-)

 

[JohnYingling]

There is no data store inside or outside of the file as to the number of lines. As a matter of fact, there really is no concept of lines IN the file system except as how software chooses to interpret CRLF.

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[MichaelRed]

Well,

John Yingling is entirely and completly correct.

On the otherhand, you can get a 'reasonable' approximation by reading some number of lines, accumulating their Lengths and dividing this by the number (of lines). The accuracy of the approximation will depend on two primary factors:

The 'sample size' (percentage of the whole) and knowing the correct "Newline" character (or at least it's length) in the file. If the file uses a single character NewLine ("CR" OR "LF&quot then you need to add one to the reported length of each line read. If the file includes a two character NewLine (CrLf), you need to add two to the reported length. In a LARGE file, the difference between one and two charcter "NewLine" can become significant. The "good News" is that for these same Large files the approxinmation should be within a percent or so with a sample of only 5 to 10 percent.



MichaelRed
redmsp@erols.com

There is never time to do it right but there is always time to do it over

 

[jjames]

Mel, if each line in your text file is the same length, you can use the following:

lngLines = FileLen("c:\YourFile.txt&quot / lngLineLength

FileLen() returns the size of the file in bytes.

As MichaelRed states, you need to include the CR and/or LF bytes when calculating the line length.