Reading in special characters from notepad--such as bullets & TM

[Beast96GT]

I'm at wit's end, guys. I can't find anything in these forums or on Google that can help me.

I'm simply trying to read in a simple notepad ASCII text file that has the TradeMark Symbol and the bullet symbol. No matter what I do, they're always read in as a combination of <quotation>X where X is another character.

I've tried multiple ways of reading them in and always get the same result. I need to be able to read in ONE character at a time because this is a tokenizer program. I've tried the following:

Open file for Input as #1
char = Input(1, #1)

Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set f = fs.OpenTextFile(File, 1, TristateTrue)
''and I've also tried TristateFalse
f.Read(1)

A Trademark symbol Chr(153) ALWAYS reads in as two characters--"!
And a bullet always reads in as "X where X is a space.

I thought this might be a unicode issue, even though the file is ASCII so I tried reading it in as Unicode, but NO lock. I can't simply convert it everytime I run into an "<space> because I have those all over the place for other reasons.

Any help or if you need clarification on my problem is MUCH MUCH appreciated.

Chris

 

[SkipVought]

Hi,

In what application are you seeing these characters DISPLAYED?

What CharacterSet or FONT are you using to display?

Skip,

_{To be safe on the [red]FOURTH[/red],
Don't take a [red]FIFTH[/red] on the [red]THIRD[/red]
Or you might not come [red]FORTH[/red] on the [red]FIFTH[/red]
[red][highlight blue]FORTH[/highlight][/red][white][highlight red]WITH[/highlight][/white]}

 

[Beast96GT]

I'm using the default font in Excel, and watching the variables as I load them in, in the IDE. I then load them in cells and it confirms my suspicions.

Do you think that the current font does not support the characters and is having difficulty loading them in?

Chris

 

[SkipVought]

Not all fonts have what you might need.

Skip,

_{To be safe on the [red]FOURTH[/red],
Don't take a [red]FIFTH[/red] on the [red]THIRD[/red]
Or you might not come [red]FORTH[/red] on the [red]FIFTH[/red]
[red][highlight blue]FORTH[/highlight][/red][white][highlight red]WITH[/highlight][/white]}

 

[PHV]

What happens if you open the file with NotePad ?

Hope This Helps, PH.
FAQ219-2884
FAQ181-2886

 

[Beast96GT]

It opens fine and displays the "TM" and the bullet inside of notepad.

How do I change the font for the entire sheet?

I tried ActiveSheet.Font.Name = "Tahoma", but it errors out on me.

Forgive me for being a noob at this, but I'm a C++ programmer trying to write an excel app for the project. Let's just say that VBE is no Visual Studio!

Is there a way to make it show what the member of an object are when you hit '.'?

Chris

 

[PHV]

When in the VBE feel free to play with the F2 (and obviously the F1) keys.

Hope This Helps, PH.
FAQ219-2884
FAQ181-2886

 

[Fr33dan]

You could try opening the file like a normal file and then looking at each character after the file is open

 

[Beast96GT]

Fr33dan,

That's what I do. Every single character is fine, except for the special ones.

I've tried changing to the notepad font that is being used:
Application.StandardFont = "Lucida Console"

No go.

Now I'm trying encoding and charactersets...

 

[Fr33dan]

From what you said in your original post your using OpenTextFile. what I mean was use workbooks.open to open the file and then loop through one at a time that way

i = 1
while not isEmpty(cells(i,1))
   for c = 1 to len(cells(i,1))
      character = left(right(cells(i,1),i),1)
      ..Do whatever you need to do
   next c
wend

 

[Fr33dan]

ops posted to quickly and left out some code

workbooks.open(FILENAME)
i = 1
while not isEmpty(cells(i,1))
   for c = 1 to len(cells(i,1))
      character = left(right(cells(i,1),i),1)
      ..Do whatever you need to do
   next c
   i = i + 1
wend

 

[Beast96GT]

Thanks for the help... It turns out the problem was I'm in fact dealing with a Unicode file. My parter sent it over to me and told me that it's an ASCII file FOR SURE, and NOT Unicode. That's what I get for listening to him.

VBA was converting all the normal characters to standard ASCII, but having problems with the extended codes.

Seems the 2-byte unicode entry for a bullet, divided up is a <quotation> and a <space>. Hex 22 and 20 when it should have been unicode 2220.

Thanks again, and I apologize for time waster.

Peace.

Chris