Re: Closing a file and the form

From: Herfried K. Wagner [MVP] (hirf-spam-me-here_at_gmx.at)
Date: 08/19/04 

Date: 19 Aug 2004 20:08:11 +0200

Kelly,

* "Kelly" <kelly.hauser@amerock.com> scripsit:
> I just read my post and I hope it didn't come across as snarky or rude. :)

You didn't.

> I figured that I'd have to launch Notepad.exe in order to open the file (if
> it was a .txt file anyway). Is there another way to open a simple txt file?
> (I'm also going to try this with .xls and .doc files in the same way.)

The meaning of the term "open" in relation to files is overloaded:

(1) Opening a file means that you start an application that is able to
    read/process/display/edit the file. In this case, the /user/ opens
    the file, for example, by doubleclicking it in Explorer. This can
    be done in VB using the 'Shell' command too. This command will
    launch an application with a certain file.

(2) Opening a file from the developer point of view means to perform
    steps that are necessary to access the data stored in a file and/or
    make it ready for reading data from the file and/or writing data to
    the file. In VB.NET, this can be done using 'FileOpen', etc., or
    the 'System.IO.StreamWriter'/'System.IO.StreamReader' class.

I assume that you want to do (1).

> I'm really new at .NET and we just started using it here at work (from vb6)
> so I thought I'd start writing a few programs to get a feel for the new
> language. All I'm really trying to do is create a csv file.

There is everything OK with that. Glad to see that people are using
VB.NET.

> I figured I could have the user input the data (in the txtboxes) and have
> them pick which type of file they'd like to save it to (.doc, .txt. or .xls)
> and then save the data. For right now, I'm only testing this for txt files
> and figured I'd have to launch Notepad.exe to get the txt files to open at
> all.

Text files can be simply written using 'FileOpen', etc., or the
'Stream*' classes. For Excel files and other binary formats, it's not
as easy because often the formats are not documented. In these cases,
Office automation can be used to write the data to the file.

> The problem is, I'm unclear of how to close the file once the user has
> selected it to save to, you know? They should be able to browse to the file,
> "test.txt", choose it, and click OK (from the file save dialog).

OK.

> I really don't even need for the user to SEE the file open up at all. All
> that really needs to happen is the user selects the file, clicks OK and it's
> done. But, my form (with the txtboxes and cmd button) and the file they
> selected (test.txt) stays open.

For simple text files, skip the 'Shell(...)' line. 

-- 
 M S   Herfried K. Wagner
M V P  <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
 V B   <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/dotnet/faqs/>