Data Table Removes Spaces

[mbde]

I have a text report. There is no delimiter, there is no fix format throughout the file. Once I can determine what line I am on I can figure out the format of that line. The problem curently is I am loading this file into a datatable. The datatable is removing leading spaces so the report that looks like

A(10 spaces)B(5 Spaces)C
(11 spaces)B(5 Spaces)C
(11 spaces)B(5 Spaces)C(5 spaces)D
(11 spaces)B(5 Spaces)C

Where A B C D are my data

in a data Table looks like
dt[0] = A(10 spaces)B(5 Spaces)C
dt[1] = B(5 Spaces)C
dt[2] = B(5 Spaces)C(5 spaces)D
dt[3] = B(5 Spaces)C


With Leading spaces removed. Can I stop a dataTable from acting like this? Now maybe the solution is not to load it into a data table but to return a open Stream, or a array of string[].

The other issue is that I need to move up and down through the file once I find a piece of informations.

Thank you.

 

[phinoppix]

To what I understand, the data file is space delimited where records have relatively random structure, but all possible structures are already identified.

You may consider 2 things: The parser, and the container of the parsed data.

For the parser, you can implement a class with several private methods corresponding to a particular record structure, and one public method as the entry point, where it will take a raw unparsed record, determine the record's format, and use the appropriate method for processing, probably persisting into a defined datastore, like a DataTable or an array of struct/class. Use a stream reader (coz it's cheaper and fast) to read each line and forward it to the parser.

Hope this helps!

 

[mbde]

Thank you for the reply. It looks like I am going to have to load it into an array of strings. I do have two parser one that takes in the file and finds certain lines. And then a line parser that finds info within those lines.

I guess my underlying question is why does dataTables/dataAdapters remove leading spaces from the data they read in?