working with a delimited text file

Question

started working on the text file reading- delimited by pipe underscore and pipe - |_| tried the following code.doesn't produce the desired result. the split condition should be modified, but how. please advise. Thanks everyone - this works now.

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        string filePath = @"J:\dot\emp.dat";


        var query = 
            from line in File.ReadLines(filePath)
            let empRecord = line.Split(new string[] {"|_|"},StringSplitOptions.None)

            select new datFile()
            {
                name = empRecord[0],
                employeeid = empRecord[1],
                income = empRecord[2],
                expenses = empRecord[3]

            };

        foreach (var item in query)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(item.name, item.employeeid, 
                 item.income, item.expenses);
        }
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    public class datFile
    {
        public string name { get; set; }
        public string employeeid { get; set; }
        public string income { get; set; }
        public string expenses { get; set; }

      }
   }

File contents:

name|_|employeeid|_|income|_|expenses
emp1|_|201501|_|100000|_|50000
emp2|_|20000|_|90000|_|30000
emp3|_|34234|_|100000|_|23000

Output:

 name
 emp1
 emp3
 emp3   
 ----- 

Answer 1

The problem is actually just here:

Console.WriteLine(item.name, item.employeeid, item.income, item.expenses);

That's using item.name as a format string, which happens not to include {0}, {1} or {2}, so the remaining arguments are effectively useless. Try this, which specifies a format string and then the values to fill in:

Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2} {3}", 
                  item.name, item.employeeid, item.income, item.expenses);

Answer 2

Have you tried splitting with a char[] instead of string[]?

let empRecord = line.Split(new char[] {'|', '_', '|'});

Answer 3

I don't work much with Console applications but try changing your code as follows:

foreach (var item in query)
{
    Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}, {2}, {3}",
        item.name, item.employeeid, item.income, item.expenses);
}

Answer 4

I'm embarrassed to say I had to test this quite a bit to figure out what was wrong, but that's because what was wrong was so obvious.

Everything in this example is correct except this line:

Console.WriteLine(item.name, item.employeeid, item.income, item.expenses);

Try:

Console.WriteLine("name={0}, employeeid={1}, income={2}, expenses={3}",
   item.name, item.employeeid, item.income, item.expenses);