String question

[nbrege]

What's the best way to strip an extension from a filename?

If I have the string MyString = "MyFile.txt" , how can I get just "MyFile"?

I know this is an easy one, but I'm fairly new to VB. Thanks...

[VagabondSW]

It is simple to do, but not necessarily simplistic. What I mean is the straight-forward methods that immediately pop to mind (Split on ".", Remove last three characters) don't work for all files. For example:

 

"release notes 0.9a beta.html"

 

So, we start with a String.

Dim filename As String = "release notes 0.9a beta.html"

 

We only want to strip off the file extension.

Dim newString As String
newString = filename.Substring(0, filename.LastIndexOf(".") + 1)

 

That should get you where you want to go.

[snarfblam]

The static Sytem.IO.Path class is good for elementary filename/path manipulation

System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show( _
System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension("C:\\Filename.txt"))
' Displays "Filename"

[nbrege]

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up using the following:

 

filetmp = Microsoft.VisualBasic.Left(filename, InStrRev(filename, ".") - 1)

 

this seems to do the trick...

[mskeel]

Rather than using the "native" Visual Basic method, it's better (at least I think so) to use the general classes from the .Net framework. Marble's suggestion is, in my opinion, the better solution.

[VagabondSW]

My suggestion is better than the VisualBasic helper functions (i.e. Left and InStr), but Marble's solution is the best one on the board so far.

[Nerseus]

I wouldn't use Left without checking if InStrRev returned 0. If you pass it a filename like "MyText" then your code will throw an exception. I'd use Marble's suggestion.

 

-ner