How do I insert commas into text? - csv

Question

I have to insert commas at certain points in lines of text, using VBScript. I need it to check the first four charcters of each line with an if statement and if it matches it inserts the commas required for that line this is what I have so far:
Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("H:\Letter Display\Letters\LTRPRT__00000008720000000001NI-K-RMND.txt", ForReading)
strNIK = "1000"
strLine = objFile.ReadLine
If Left(strLine,4) = strNIK then
arrCommas = Array(16,31,46,56,66,79,94,99)
Do Until objFile.AtEndOfStream
intLength = Len(strLine)
For Each strComma in arrCommas
strLine = Left(strLine, strComma - 1) + "," + Mid(strLine, strComma, intLength)
Next
strText = strText & strLine & vbCrLf
Loop
end if
objFile.Close
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("H:\Letter Display\Letters\LTRPRT__00000008720000000001NI-K-RMND.txt", ForWriting)
objFile.Write strText
objFile.Close
If anyone could help with making this an IF statement it would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to move the ReadLine and the conditional inside the Do..Loop:
strNIK = "1000"
arrCommas = Array(16,31,46,56,66,79,94,99)
Do Until objFile.AtEndOfStream
strLine = objFile.ReadLine
If Left(strLine, 4) = strNIK then
intLength = Len(strLine)
For Each strComma in arrCommas
strLine = Left(strLine, strComma - 1) + "," _
+ Mid(strLine, strComma, intLength)
Next
End If
strText = strText & strLine & vbCrLf
Loop
If you want the output to consist only of the modified lines, move the line strText = strText & strLine & vbCrLf inside the conditional:
If Left(strLine, 4) = strNIK then
'...
strText = strText & strLine & vbCrLf
End If
Do the comma indexes in your array already account for the positional shift that is caused by the character insertion?
Also, it might be a good idea to write the output line by line to a temporary file and then replace the input file with that temporary file after you finished processing all input:
Set inFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(inputFilename, ForReading)
Set outFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(outputFilename, ForWriting)
Do Until inFile.AtEndOfStream
strLine = inFile.ReadLine
'do stuff with strLine
outFile.WritLine
Loop
inFile.Close
outFile.Close
objFSO.DeleteFile inputFilename, True
objFSO.MoveFile outputFilename, inputFilename
That way you can avoid memory exhaustion when processing large files.
You can process all files with a specific extension in a given directory like this:
folderName = "C:\some\folder"
For Each objFile In objFSO.GetFolder(folderName).Files
If LCase(objFSO.GetExtensionName(objFile.Name)) = "ltr" Then
'processing takes place here
End If
Next
If you want to use the inputfile/outputfile approach I suggested above, you can either use the same temporary outputfile name for each input file, or you can derive the outputfile name from the inputfile name, e.g. like this:
inputFilename = objFile.Name
outputFilename = inputFilename & ".tmp"