Counting Fields in a Delimited String (or Words in a String)

Category:

String Manipulation

Type:

Snippets

Difficulty:

Beginning

Author:

Gavin Bollard

Version Compatibility: Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic 5

More information:

This routine was written when I was handling a series of comma delimited files (of varying sizes). I used the vb line input statement to read a line from the file into memory, and needed to be able to determine how many fields (separate data items were in it).

For example - the following string contains four fields (this routine would return a 4).

Roger Wilco, 02 9805 9809, Space Fleet Headquarters, Janitor

Since sentances are delimited by spaces, this routine could also be used to count the number of words in a string (by passing a single space as a delimiter).

This is especially useful for VB5, because in VB6 you can do a similiar thing with fewer lines of code using the Split function.

Instructions: Copy the declarations and code below and paste directly into your VB project.

Declarations:
' (None)

Code:

Function CountFields(LineDataIN As String, _
     Delimiter As String) As Integer
    Dim NewPos As Integer
    Dim MaxPos As Integer
    Dim FieldCounter As Integer
    
    If LineDataIN = "" Or Delimiter = "" Then
        CountFields = 0
        Exit Function
    End If
    
    MaxPos = Len(LineDataIN)
    NewPos = 1
    FieldCounter = 1
    
    While (NewPos < MaxPos) And (NewPos <> 0)
        NewPos = InStr(NewPos, LineDataIN, _
            Delimiter, vbTextCompare)
        If NewPos <> 0 Then
            FieldCounter = FieldCounter + 1
            NewPos = NewPos + 1
        End If
    Wend
    CountFields = FieldCounter
End Function

Sub CmdTest_Click
'This is just a test routine and isn't required....
'Just here to show how the code can be used.

Dim NumberOfFields As Integer
     Dim Delimiter As String
     Dim LineDataIn As String
     
     Delimiter = Inputbox$("Type a Field Delimiter","DEMO:Delimited Field Counter",",")
     LineDataIn = Inputbox$("Enter a Delimted String to have its fields counted","DEMO:Delimited Field Counter")
     
     NumberOfFields = CountFields(LineDataIN, Delimiter)
     Msgbox "There are: " + Str$(NumberOfFields) + " fields in the string ("+LineDataIn + ")",64,"DEMO:Delimited Field Counter"
End Sub