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O
oystersauces
New Participant
August 23, 2017
Answered

File.read() returns nothing for .txt file

  • August 23, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 7550 views

Hi,

I'm searching a way to read (and subsequently edit) the contents of a text file on my disk. I thought it works with the File.read() function but when I run the following I get nothing from the file. How does it work? How do I get the string with the file content? I tried different functions like readln() etc but with no luck

var testtextfile = File("/c/users/bernhard-büro/desktop/text.txt");

testtextfile.open("r", undefined, undefined);

//also tried with .open("r"); and .open('r');

var fileContentsString = testtextfile.read();

   

alert("Full path: "+testtextfile.fsName+"\r\n"+
      "File content:"+fileContentsString+"\r\n"+
      "fileContentsString length:"+fileContentsString.length);
    
testtextfile.close();

this is the result: (and what is the proper way to format code in this forum?)

Thank you very much!
Cheers

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Trevor:

Often the cause is encoding related.

Try

var testtextfile = File("/c/users/bernhard-büro/desktop/text.txt");
testtextfile.encoding = 'UTF8'; // set to 'UTF8' or 'UTF-8'
testtextfile.open("r");
var fileContentsString = testtextfile.read();
testtextfile.close();
alert("Full path: " + testtextfile.fsName + "\r\n" +
    "File content:" + fileContentsString + "\r\n" +
    "fileContentsString length:" + fileContentsString.length);

To format the code you go to advanced editor

and then

HTH

Trevor

3 replies

P
Peter Kahrel
Community Expert
August 23, 2017

Apart from the encoding, another problem might be the u+umlaut in your filename. If Trevor's suggestion doesn't help, rename the file so that its name doesn't have any accented characters, then try again.

    L
    Laubender
    Community Expert
    August 23, 2017

    Hi Peter,

    about the u umlaut problem:
    I've seen this on Mac OS X where a ü in a file name can be composed out of:

    u\u0308

    Could that happen on Windows as well?

    Regards,
    Uwe

    Loic.Aigon
    Loic.Aigon
    Brainiac
    August 25, 2017

    > Could that happen on Windows as well?

    No, it doesn't. One of the few areas where Windows behaves better than the Mac OSs


    Hi

    I second that. I discovered that recently while resolving image files instance on Mac Os. I got a textual reference with a diacritic such as "marché.jpg" and the file couldn't be found to my surprise. I coudl see the file but using File ("marché.jpg").exists would return false.

    Fact is Mac os was using "marche[diacritic].jpg"

    Painful indeed.

    Trevor:
    Trevor:Correct answer
    Brainiac
    August 23, 2017

    Often the cause is encoding related.

    Try

    var testtextfile = File("/c/users/bernhard-büro/desktop/text.txt");
    testtextfile.encoding = 'UTF8'; // set to 'UTF8' or 'UTF-8'
    testtextfile.open("r");
    var fileContentsString = testtextfile.read();
    testtextfile.close();
    alert("Full path: " + testtextfile.fsName + "\r\n" +
        "File content:" + fileContentsString + "\r\n" +
        "fileContentsString length:" + fileContentsString.length);

    To format the code you go to advanced editor

    and then

    HTH

    Trevor

      O
      oystersaucesAuthor
      New Participant
      August 28, 2017

      Hi Trevor, thanks a lot for that. I still have to find out what exactly is going on in detail about the character encoding on my system (changing it doesn't seem to be necessary in most cases) but now I can parse the text out of my file, great! Kind regards, Stefan

      Trevor:
      Trevor:
      Brainiac
      August 28, 2017

      Hi Stefan

      The need for the encoding is dependent on the contents of the file.

      If the files contains just asci then you shouldn't need to set it. ü and most of the diacritics are asci extended and also shouldn't need setting but if the text contains Unicode characters you are generally going to need to set it.

      Trevor  

      tpk1982
      tpk1982
      Brainiac
      August 23, 2017

      Please try this..

      var testtextfile = new File("/c/users/bernhard-büro/desktop/text.txt");

      testtextfile.open('r');

      fileContentsString = testtextfile.readln();

      alert("File content:"+fileContentsString);

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