Trim() does not work on the first line...

[highend]

Hi,

I'm reading an UTF-8 BOM file line by line and one thing that
needs to be done is trimming spaces and tabs from the beginning
and end of all lines

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    While Not Eof(fileHandle)                 ; Loop as long the 'end of file' isn't reached
      line = ReadString(fileHandle)          ; Get the line
      line = Trim(line)                           ; Trim spaces
      line = Trim(line, #TAB$)                ; Trim tabs as well
      Debug "#"+line+"#"
      ; Do more...
    Wend

The file begins with this:

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		::
		Set $Bookmarks;

These lines are leaded by two tabs

The debug output looks like this:

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#		::#
#Set $Bookmarks;#

Why aren't the two tabs from the first line not removed by

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line = Trim(line, #TAB$)

?

[Josh]

If there is first a Tab and then a Space, the Space will not be eliminated

or

there is a BOM in your file

[IdeasVacuum]

Even if you are not interested in the file format, use ReadStringFormat() first, which moves the file read pointer beyond the BOM (Byte Order Mark) marker. Then Trim tabs, spaces or anything else that gets in the way.

[Little John]

If you are not sure whether a line begins with a Space or with a Tab, you can use the functions which I posted here.

Then your code could look like this:

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fmt = ReadStringFormat(fileHandle)
While Not Eof(fileHandle)
   line$ = TrimAny(ReadString(fileHandle))
   ; [...]
Wend

[highend]

OK,

I've tried it with

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FileSeek(fileHandle, 4)

which worked as well but ReadStringFormat(#File)
really seems to be the simpler option here.

@Little John
My first try was to read the file into memory in one go
and do most of the necessary processing by ~2 regex replaces
(including the other work I need to do...)
but it seems I can't use ReplaceRegularExpression() on a string
in memory... (with something like @*buffer). I'll take a look
at your procedures.

Thanks!

[normeus]

@IdeasVacuum has the simplest solution since I see a BOM on the sample you pasted:

0xEF

Code: Select all

ReadStringFormat(fileHandle)             ;as IdeasVacuum suggested  
    While Not Eof(fileHandle)                 ; Loop as long the 'end of file' isn't reached
      line = ReadString(fileHandle)          ; Get the line
      line = Trim(line)                           ; Trim spaces
      line = Trim(line, #TAB$)                ; Trim tabs as well
      Debug "#"+line+"#"
      ; Do more...
    Wend

@Little John's TrimAny() function looks useful so I will save that link for me.


Norm.

[IdeasVacuum]

Unless you always know how many bytes to jump, don't use FileSeek()