Easy Method of Writing And Reading Small Text Files

In a production application, every time you want to access a file for reading or writing, you have to retrieve a free handle using the FreeFile() function to make sure that you do not overwrite an existing handle. Not only this, but you have to remember to close the file after you are done with it.

In some specific cases, you can avoid the trouble by wrapping this functionality inside utility functions.

For example, I wrote the following two functions to go between strings and text files in my apps.

public Function ReadFile(FileName as string) as string

    Dim i as Integer
    i = FreeFile

    on error GoTo ErrorTrap

    Open FileName for input as #i
    ReadFile = input(LOF(i), i)
    Close #i

    Exit Function

ErrorTrap:

    ReadFile = ""

End Function


public Sub WriteFile(FileName as string, Contents as string)

    Dim i as Integer
    i = FreeFile

    Open FileName for Output as #i

    print #i, Contents
    Close #i

End Sub

Once these functions are in your project, you have a quick way of reading and writing text files. For example, the following code is a weird way of copying text files:

Call WriteFile("c:b.txt", ReadFile("c:a.txt"))