Visual Basic Instinct : Using Files

Using Files

File IO is a very important part of programming. Although many applications are relying more on database access than files, knowing how to manipulate files will improve your programming abilities and flexibility.

	Using Files: Section I
Files are the second-most important thing a programmer interacts with (second only to the user). You can store vital information, databases, setup information, and countless other things in files. This introduction will cover basic file IO in Visual Basic. You will learn how to read and write ordinary strings to files, and how to manipulate information stored in files.

	Using Files: Section II
In Section I, we discussed how to read one line a at time from a file, and also how to write to files. In this section, we will look at reading entire files and counting the number of lines in a file. You will also learn how to read record-style data.

	Using Files: Section III
In this section, we will look at reading and writing other types of data when strings. The problems that this causes in international Windows will also be covered along with ways to guard yourself.

	Using Files: Section IV
This section teaches you how to work with files in other modes than `Input` and `Append`, and shows you how user defined types can be stored in files. You will also learn how to work with binary files.

	Using Files: Section V
This section will discuss how to read data from random parts in a binaryfile, and will look at file locking.

	Using Files: Section VI
This section will cover file error handling, and demonstrate how to use error trapping to check the status of files.