This month's tip is about loading text files directly into a texteditor window. The functionality was documented in earlier versions of LB, but often missed. The really great thing is the timesavings that this little technique can save, in programming as well as execution times.

Here is how it works:
Open a window in your code which has a texteditor placed on it. Initially the texteditor will be blank. filling it with text is a matter of three simple steps (and the first one can be skipped if you already know the name of the file you plan to load).

First get the name of the file to be loaded into the texteditor. Unless you already know the name of the file, simply open a filedialog window and let the user pick a file. Here are the commands to do that part:

 fileName$ = ""
     FileDialog "Open text file", "*.txt", fileName$

Now we should have a valid filename from the operating system. It is possible that the user pressed cancel, so we will test the string to insure it contains a value. If it does we will open the file. Here is the code:

 If fileName$ <> "" Then
     Open fileName$ For Input As #file

Continuing in the same IF-THEN block, we will simply "print" the contents of the file into the texteditor. This is done by using the "!contents" text command. The help file says the following about the command:

print #handle, "!contents varname$";
     print #handle, "!contents #handle";

This has two forms as described above. The first form causes the contents of the text window to be replaced with the contents of varname$, and the second form causes the contents of the text window to be replaced with the contents of the stream referenced by #handle. This second form is useful for reading large text files quickly into the window.

So, we should be able to load the entire file we just opened (as #file) into the texteditor with the following command:

 #main.tedit, "!contents #file";

Don't forget to close the file after you are done with it, and end the IF-THEN block.

 Close #file
     End If

So, that is how it is done. There is a short demo program that accompanies this newsletter called LBNR.BAS from which this code snippet came from (it is included in a zip file - LBNR.ZIP which is attached). You can see the code in action if you load and run the program in LB3.x or higher.