Using Stream Writer to Add Numbers in text file

Question

I am using Stream Writer class and am trying to sum up all the numbers in my text file. My text file format is below:

name | number
-------------
  a       2
  a       3

What I am trying to do is to print out the sum of the numbers but am struggling to grab the numbers. I was thinking about using a for loop to sum up the numbers but not sure where to start to grab the numbers only.

Answer 1

You can simply do something like the following:

string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines("sample.txt");
int sum = 0;
foreach (string line in lines.Skip(2))
{
    sum += Convert.ToInt32(line.Trim().Split(' ').Last());
}

• First we create an empty sum variable of type int (if this needs to be double it can be easily swapped here, of course).
• Skip(2) skips the first two lines (header and line separator).
• Trim() removes leading or trailing spaces from the current line.
• Split(' ') splits the current line by a space character to break apart the name column from the number column (note that it actually creates additional empty columns as well because we split by a single space character).
• Last() to selects the last column, which in this case will always select the number column.
• Convert.ToInt32() converts the last column to an int type (which can be double instead if desired, as explained previously).