How to parse text file with multiple delimiters

Question

I have a text file I'm trying to parse. The data is a single string and uses four types of deliminators. There's also a record count at the end of the file that's not pertinent to the data that I can ignore.

Deliminators:

Beginning of data: ~
Field Seperator: |
End of record: #
End of data: ^

Sample text file:

~001|John|Smith|300#002|Abby|Williams|250#003|Tom|Jones|400#004|Claire|Benton|300^
Count:4

The parsed data should be stored in a list or collection of objects "Account"

public class Account
        {
            public string IdNum { get; set; }
            public string FirstName { get; set; }
            public string LastName { get; set; }
            public string AmtDue { get; set; }
        }

I'm still new to programming so please teach me what would be the best way to parse and store this data? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you know all delimiters, you can use something like this:

var s = "~001|John|Smith|300#002|Abby|Williams|250#003|Tom|Jones|400#004|Claire|Benton|300^Count: 4";

// select a line between "~" and "^".
var data = new string(s.SkipWhile(c => c == '~').TakeWhile(c => c != '^').ToArray());
var records = data.Split('#');
var accounts = records.Select(record => record.Split('|'))
  .Select(items => new Account
  {
    IdNum = items[0],
    FirstName = items[1],
    LastName = items[2],
    AmtDue = items[3]
  })
  .ToList();

foreach (var account in accounts)
{
  Console.WriteLine(account.IdNum);
  Console.WriteLine(account.FirstName);
  Console.WriteLine(account.LastName);
  Console.WriteLine(account.AmtDue);
  Console.WriteLine();
}

Just first of all split by row delimiters, then split by field delimiter.

P.S. Don't forget check variables on null or array length like you need.