Text file to array for searching

[christophercbrewster via OfficeKB.com]

I have some code working quite well but it includes some clunky code that I'd
like to do in a better way. There's a text file containing a tab-delimited
table of strings. The way it works now is to copy the file contents into a
Word scratch document and convert the tabbed table to a Word table. Then it
searches for a flag in column 1 and uses strings in columns 2 and 3 to do
some processing.

It seems that the real way to do this is to split the tabbed table to a 2-D
array. Then search the elements to perform this sequence:

1. Look for the flag string in column 1
2. When the flag is found, change that element's value to empty
3. Read the values of elements 2 and 3 in the same row
4. [further processing]
5. Loop to find next flag

So my questions are:

- Is there a good way to make a tabbed text table into a 2-D character array,
without having to use Word's table facility?

- Is there a good way to quickly search an array for an element and then work
with related elements? It would be nice to do this without a loop that
increments through the rows and does "if element value equals search string,
then do such-and-such". I'd rather do something that's closer to "find the
next flag and do such-and-such".

Thanks for advice.

--
Christopher Brewster
Lockheed Martin, Eagan MN

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[Cindy M.]

Hi Christophercbrewster,

- Is there a good way to make a tabbed text table into a 2-D character array,
without having to use Word's table facility?

I don't know of any functions that will return 2-D arrays. But the SPLIT
function will return a 1-D array, so you could make an array of arrays, then do
something with that. It would certainly be faster than parsing a Word table in
the Word object model.

- Is there a good way to quickly search an array for an element and then work
with related elements? It would be nice to do this without a loop that
increments through the rows and does "if element value equals search string,
then do such-and-such". I'd rather do something that's closer to "find the
next flag and do such-and-such".

What VBA offers is limited, I think, in comparison to the .NET Framework.

You could set up a User defined Type, then create an array of the individual
Type objects.

You could create a Collection. The advantage of a Collection over an array is
that you can use the "Key" value to "look up" individual members.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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