Scripting.FileSystemObject<\/b>, then use this line of code to open the file Test.txt:<\/p>\nSet objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(\"C:\\Scripts\\Test.txt\", ForReading)\n<\/pre>\nAnd what do we do with that file once it\u2019s open? To tell you the truth, not much; in fact, all we\u2019re going to do is use the ReadAll<\/b> method to read in the entire contents of the file, storing that information in a variable named strTargetText:<\/p>\nstrTargetText = objFile.ReadAll\n<\/pre>\nAt that point we call the Close<\/b> method and never touch Test.txt again. Why not? Because we don\u2019t need it anymore; instead, we\u2019ll conduct all our searches on the virtual copy of Test.txt stored in the variable strTargetText.<\/p>\n
Next we create an instance of the VBScript.RegExp<\/b> object, the object that enables us to do regular expression searches within a VBScript script:<\/p>\nSet objRegEx = CreateObject(\"VBScript.RegExp\")\n<\/pre>\nWe set the Global<\/b> property of our regular expressions object to True (to make sure that we find all the possible matches in the target text), then reuse the FileSystemObject and open the file Names.txt:<\/p>\nSet objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(\"C:\\Scripts\\Names.txt\", ForReading)\n<\/pre>\nNow we\u2019re ready to actually do something useful. To begin with, we set up a Do Until loop that runs until the file\u2019s AtEndOfStream<\/b> property is True; that simply means that we\u2019re going to keep reading the file until there\u2019s nothing left to read. Inside this loop we use the ReadLine<\/b> method to read in the first line (the first name) from the text file, storing that value in the variable strName:<\/p>\nstrName = objFile.ReadLine\n<\/pre>\nThat brings us to this line of code:<\/p>\n
objRegEx.Pattern = \".{0,}\" & strName & \".{0,}\\n\"\n<\/pre>\nWhat we\u2019re doing here is telling the script exactly what text we\u2019re searching for. And what text are<\/i> we searching for? Well, for starters, the construction .{0,}<\/b> means we\u2019re searching for zero or more instances of any character (that\u2019s what the . <\/b>represents) except for<\/i> the carriage return linefeed character. In other words, we want some characters (any characters except the carriage return-linefeed characters) followed by the name we just read in from the text file. That name must then be followed by 0 or more characters, followed \u2013 at long last \u2013 by a carriage return-linefeed (\\n<\/b>). <\/p>\n
So why do search for all that even though we\u2019re just looking for a name like tom<\/i> or joseph<\/i>? One reason and one reason only: that\u2019s how we can extract an entire line from the file. After all, we\u2019re no longer searching for the name tom<\/i>; we\u2019re now searching for a line of text that happens to include the name tom<\/i>. It looks a little crazy (as do many regular expressions), but it works.<\/p>\n
After we assign the value to the Pattern<\/b> property we then use this line of code to search strTargetText for that pattern:<\/p>\nSet colMatches = objRegEx.Execute(strTargetText)\n<\/pre>\nAny instances of the pattern we find will be placed in a collection we named colMatches. How do we know if we actually found any instances of the pattern? That\u2019s easy; we simply check the value of the collection\u2019s Count<\/b> property:<\/p>\nIf colMatches.Count > 0 Then\n<\/pre>\nIf the Count is equal to 0 that means that the pattern could not be found; in that case we simply go back to the top of the loop and try again with the next name in the text file. If the Count is greater than 0 that means at least one match was<\/i> found. With that in mind, we use a For Each loop to loop through all the matches in the collection, adding the value of each match (in effect, the line from the text file) to a variable named strText:<\/p>\nstrText = strText & strMatch.Value\n<\/pre>\nAfter we\u2019ve run similar searches for all the names in the text file we then echo back the value of strText. If all goes according to plan, that should give us output like this:<\/p>\n
192.168.0.0, this is sql users, tom, testmachine\n192.168.0.6, this is sql users, tom, testmachine11\n192.168.0.0, this is sql users, joseph, testmachine5\n<\/pre>\nPerfect! Or, as they say in Spanish, perfecto!<\/p>\n
Speaking of Spanish, the term Cinco de Mayo<\/i> translates to the fifth of May. The Scripting Guy who writes this column grew up in the Tri-Cities, WA. Try to guess when the Tri-Cities held its<\/i> Cinco de Mayo celebration this year. You\u2019re right: May 3<\/i>rd<\/sup>.<\/p>\nSee? It\u2019s not his fault that the Scripting Guy who writes this column turned out the way he did.<\/p>\n
Well, not entirely, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a scenario in which I need to read a list of names from a text file. I then need to search for each of those names in a second text file; if a name is found I need to extract the entire line in which that name appears. I\u2019ve figured […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,14,5],"class_list":["post-55633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-text-files","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a scenario in which I need to read a list of names from a text file. I then need to search for each of those names in a second text file; if a name is found I need to extract the entire line in which that name appears. I\u2019ve figured […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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