How to skip first line and start reading file from second line in C#

Question

How to start reading file from 2nd line skipping 1st line. This seems to work but is it best way to do so?

            using (StreamReader sr = new StreamRea         


        

Answer 1

I'm sorry but I see no problem with the way you are doing it though. I couldn't add comment.

So just for the sake of answering, you probably could have try to call ReadLine() once before the loop. Might not be the best way as I don't know whats the behavior of running ReadLine() if its already end of stream, but it nothing is gonna happen then thats gonna save you some checks.

Updated:

To give a more complete answer, calling ReadLine() when the stream is at its end will return a null.

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.streamreader.readline.aspx

Remember to check the return for null value.

Answer 2

If the file is not very large and can fit in memory:

foreach (var line in File.ReadAllLines(varFile, Encoding.GetEncoding(1250)).Skip(1))
{
    string[] values = line.Split(',');
    ...
}

If not write an iterator:

public IEnumerable<string> ReadAllLines(string filename, Encoding encoding)
{
    using (var reader = new StreamReader(filename, encoding))
    {
        string line;
        while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
        {
            yield return line;
        }
    }
}

and then consume it:

foreach (var line in ReadAllLines(varFile, Encoding.GetEncoding(1250)).Skip(1))
{
    string[] values = line.Split(',');
    ...
}

Answer 3

Could you not just read the first line outside of the loop without assigning it to a variable?

using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(varFile, Encoding.GetEncoding(1250))) {
            string[] stringSeparator = new string[] { "\",\"" };
            if (!sr.EndOfStream)
                sr.ReadLine();
            while (!sr.EndOfStream) {                    
                string line = sr.ReadLine(); //.Trim('"');
                string[] values = line.Split(stringSeparator, StringSplitOptions.None);

                for (int index = 0; index < values.Length; index++) {
                    MessageBox.Show(values[index].Trim('"'));
                }
            }
        }