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Hi, I'm new to the forums and they're great! Anyway, I'm trying to get it where in VB.net: I want to enter 3 letters in a textbox, click a button, and it generate all possible words in a listbox that I can create with those three letters. I have a dictionary.txt file it can refer to, as well. For example, if I type in "eat" in the textbox and hit my button, the listbox should display "ATE" "EAT" and "TEA". Here is the code I have been working on:
CODE
lstWords.Items.Clear() Dim allwords As IO.StreamReader = IO.File.OpenText("c:\dictionary.txt") Dim y As String Dim temp As String Do While allwords.Peek <> -1 y = allwords.ReadLine y = y.ToUpper() temp = y temp.Contains("A" Or "B" Or "C" Or "D" Or "E" Or "F" Or "G" Or "H" Or "I" Or "J" Or "K" Or "L" Or "M" Or "N" Or "O" Or "P" Or "Q" Or "R" Or "S" Or "T" Or "U" Or "V" Or "W" Or "X" Or "Y" Or "Z") If y = temp Then lstWords.Items.Add(allwords.ReadToEnd.Contains(temp)) End If
Loop
Before I added the temp.Contains line, it was just return "True" in my listbox when I click my button. Once I added that long line, it's giving me the error (once I click the button): "Conversion from string "A" to type 'Long' is not valid"
Thanks in advance for any help, ~ Lonnie
This post has been edited by WizX: 14 Oct, 2007 - 12:00 AM
Well, first thing I notice is that you're if then statement is always going to return true because in this code, y will be the same thing as temp because you set it equal two likes above your conditional. The string.contains method doesn't put all strings in a variable that contain the argument, it returns a boolean saying that they are(not) contained inside that string.
(Example from the MSDN Library)
CODE
' This example demonstrates the String.Contains() method Imports System
Class Sample Public Shared Sub Main() Dim s1 As String = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" Dim s2 As String = "fox" Dim b As Boolean b = s1.Contains(s2) Console.WriteLine("Is the string, s2, in the string, s1?: {0}", b) End Sub 'Main End Class 'Sample ' 'This example produces the following results: ' 'Is the string, s2, in the string, s1?: True '
As for your error, I'm fairly certain (but someone correct me if I'm wrong) that you can't use Or within a value passed to a method, so that would probably be what throws it. Typically that code would be written more along the lines of If string.contains("A") orelse string.contains("B")... and so forth. Also, if I'm reading correctly What this code is currently doing (or attempting to do rather) is reading the entire word list into y, putting that word list again into temp, checking to see if temp contains any letter from A-Z, and if it does, then output the entire file.
Not to say that I don't think you're on the right track with the contains thing, but you will need to rework a few things in order for this code to work. What I might suggest (though, there are others on this board that can probably tell you a better method) since you're wanting to search for words no matter the order of the letters, is to look into the String.ToCharArray method and then possibly a For Each...Next loop. If you have trouble understanding or implementing any of this, feel free to post in this same thread and ask. Hope this helps!
This post has been edited by aceofspades686: 14 Oct, 2007 - 12:30 AM
Hi, thanks for the fast response. I won't lie and claim I understand everything you told me, but I have been working on different methods. Here is my new updated code:
CODE
Private Sub btnGo_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnGo.Click lstWords.Items.Clear() Dim allwords As IO.StreamReader = IO.File.OpenText("c:\dictionary.txt") Dim y As String Dim temp As String Do While allwords.Peek <> -1 y = allwords.ReadLine y = y.ToUpper() temp = y If temp.Contains("A") OrElse temp.Contains("B") OrElse temp.Contains("C") OrElse temp.Contains("D") OrElse temp.Contains("E") _ OrElse temp.Contains("F") OrElse temp.Contains("G") OrElse temp.Contains("H") OrElse temp.Contains("I") OrElse temp.Contains("J") _ OrElse temp.Contains("C") OrElse temp.Contains("C") OrElse temp.Contains("C") OrElse temp.Contains("C") OrElse temp.Contains("C") _ OrElse temp.Contains("K") OrElse temp.Contains("L") OrElse temp.Contains("M") OrElse temp.Contains("N") OrElse temp.Contains("O") _ OrElse temp.Contains("P") OrElse temp.Contains("Q") OrElse temp.Contains("R") OrElse temp.Contains("S") OrElse temp.Contains("T") _ OrElse temp.Contains("U") OrElse temp.Contains("V") OrElse temp.Contains("W") OrElse temp.Contains("X") OrElse temp.Contains("Y") _ OrElse temp.Contains("Z") Then lstWords.Items.Add(allwords.ToString.Contains(temp)) End If
Loop
When I click my btnGo button, after typing in a string in the textbox, it generates about 60,000 "False" strings in my listbox. Btw, 60,000 is the number of words in my dictionary.txt file, it's like it just replaced every line with "False" rather than the word. It never comes up "True" no matter what I type in my textbox. Also, I know you mentioned above about the arrays, I tried replacing all of the temp.Contains as temp.ToCharArray.ToString.Contains("A"), but that didn't make any difference. Sorry that I don't understand arrays yet...
Well, at least you got rid of the error, that's getting somewhere.
Okay, first off, you have to get what's in your textbox before you can compare anything to it. From what I can see, you read from your txt file and write to your listbox, but no input from your textbox.
Also, to explain what I mean about the string.tochararray method. The simplest terms I can think to describe an array as is a list (at least in this case, but I won't go into to much detail). I will warn you in advance (unless there's some simpler method that I don't know) this code will get really messy really quick no matter which way you go about it.
I'll give you this snippet to help you out.
CODE
Dim strInput As String = TextBox1.Text 'This would be your input Dim inputChar As Char() = strInput.ToUpper.ToCharArray 'This is the character array I was talking about earlier, it would contain all of the characters (letters) in your input string in a list Dim testcount As Integer = 0 'This is used to test and see if the character is there, I'll explain why in a moment
For Each c As Char In inputChar ' Loop that runs through and looks at each character in the array If allwords.Contains(c.ToString) Then testcount += 1 ' If the word you're currently looking at contains that character, increment the counter by one End If Next
If testcount = inputChar.Length Then ' This is where the testcount comes in. Essentially this takes the number and if all the characters in the array (your input string) were found in the word, then it outputs the word Label1.Text = allwords 'I used a label just as a quick test, listbox would be the same principle End If
As I said, it gets a little messy, but if you can figure out how to implement this code within your code, then it should work.
Ok, I've tried implementing the code. Here's what I have:
CODE
Private Sub btnGo_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnGo.Click lstWords.Items.Clear() Dim allwords As IO.StreamReader = IO.File.OpenText("c:\dictionary.txt") Dim strInput As String = txtInput.Text 'The input Dim inputChar As Char() = strInput.ToUpper.ToCharArray 'This is the character array I was talking about earlier, it would contain all of the characters (letters) in your input string in a list Dim testcount As Integer = 0 'This is used to test and see if the character is there
For Each c As Char In inputChar ' Loop that runs through and looks at each character in the array If allwords.Contains(c.ToString) Then testcount += 1 ' If the word you're currently looking at contains that character, increment the counter by one End If Next
If testcount = inputChar.Length Then ' This is where the testcount comes in. Essentially this takes the number and if all the characters in the array (your input string) were found in the word, then it outputs the word lstWords.Text = allwords 'I used a label just as a quick test, listbox would be the same principle End If
Two errors: "If allwords.Contains(c.ToString)" -- allwords.Contains is underlined, and it says 'Contains' is not a member of 'System.IO.StreamReader'. The other error: "lstWords.Text = allwords" -- allwords is underlined, and it says Value of type 'System.IO.StreamReader' cannot be converted to 'String'.
Thanks again for any help, I think I'm starting to understand what an array is.
This post has been edited by WizX: 14 Oct, 2007 - 03:44 AM
The problem you're having now is because Contains isnt a member of StreamReader, as the error states. What you have to do is
Open the file with your StreamReader
Read the contents of the file into a string variable
Then check that string variable
I made a couple changes to your code that show how this is done
CODE
Private Sub btnGo_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BtnGo.Click ' lstWords.Items.Clear() Dim allwords As IO.StreamReader = IO.File.OpenText("c:\dictionary.txt") Dim file As String = allwords.ReadToEnd Dim strInput As String '= txtInput.Text 'The input Dim inputChar As Char() = strInput.ToUpper.ToCharArray 'This is the character array I was talking about earlier, it would contain all of the characters (letters) in your input string in a list Dim testcount As Integer = 0 'This is used to test and see if the character is there
For Each c As Char In inputChar ' Loop that runs through and looks at each character in the array If file.Contains(c.ToString) Then testcount += 1 ' If the word you're currently looking at contains that character, increment the counter by one End If Next
If testcount = inputChar.Length Then ' This is where the testcount comes in. Essentially this takes the number and if all the characters in the array (your input string) were found in the word, then it outputs the word lstWords.Text = allwords 'I used a label just as a quick test, listbox would be the same principle End If End Sub
Here I declare a String variable named file, then right below the declaration I have file = allwords.ReadToEnd which tells the StreamReader to read the entire file and dump the contents into the file variable. Then you can do If file.Contains(c.ToString) as you had before.
Ack! Sorry, that was my bad. I wrote the code like allwords was the string containing the line read, not the file reader itself. Either way, PsychoCoder already pointed out the mistake, so that code should work.
Thanks for the replies. On the last code you gave me, when I tried to run it, it underlined strInput.ToUpper.ToCharArray and says: Variable 'strInput' is used before it has been assigned a value.
I tried running it anyway, and it just gives me a Null Reference Exception error.
You'll need to change txtInput.text to reference to whatever you have your input textbox named. I used txtInput as an example.
My textbox is already named txtInput. Using the exact code that PsychoCoder pasted, the allword on the line: lstWords.Text = allwords is underlined, and it says: Value of type 'System.IO.StreamReader' cannot be converted to 'String' I tried a few things, but when I do it just underlines the thing I referred to in my last post (strInput)
Quick question before I answer this. I already see the problem, but how are your words separated within your dictionary.txt file? Are they each on a separate line?
Quick question before I answer this. I already see the problem, but how are your words separated within your dictionary.txt file? Are they each on a separate line?
They are all on a separate line, such as: AA AAH AAHED AAHING AAHS AAL
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