Search Text Files

Category:

Files and Directories

Type:

Snippets

Difficulty:

Intermediate

Author:

Amitai Laufer

Version Compatibility: Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic 5

More information:

Quick and easy to use search function. Find a string in any number of text files. Requires a Reference to Microsoft Scripting Runtime.

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

Declarations:
Private Const ForReading = 1 'FileSystemObject constants Private Const ForWriting = 2 Private Const ForAppending = 8 Public FileList As New Collection 'List of files to search Public Results As New Collection 'Results filenames Public pos As New Collection 'Results position in file

Code:

Public Sub AddFile(path As String, filename As String)
    'Add files to list. wildcards allowed
    Dim s As String
    s = Dir(path + filename)
    Do While s <> ""
        FileList.Add path + s, path + s
        s = Dir
    Loop
End Sub

Public Sub ClearFileList()
    'Clear the files list
    Dim i As Integer
    For i = 1 To FileList.Count
        FileList.Remove 1
    Next i
End Sub

Public Function Find(st As String) As Integer
    'Find st in the files listed. returns the number of results
    Dim tx As String, i As Integer
    Find = 0
    Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    For i = 1 To Results.Count
        Results.Remove 1
    Next i
    For Each fn In FileList
        Set fil = fso.GetFile(fn)
        Set ts = fil.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading)
        tx = ts.ReadAll
        i = InStr(1, tx, st)
        Do While i > 0
            Find = Find + 1
            Results.Add fn
            pos.Add i
            i = InStr(i + 1, tx, st)
        Loop
        ts.Close
    Next fn
End Function