Chapter 12 - Text Files and String Processing

A new word, "Exploring" is used in the title of this chapter of Visual Basic .NET Step by Step and it's there for a good reason. With this chapter, we have entered a 'new territory' of programming where there is literally so much that all we can do is 'explore' a bit. It's really impossible to go into detail about everything.

Before the age of Windows started, virtually all processing was 'string processing'. 'Objects' were a new idea and the term GUI or Graphical User Interface was invented to tell people that it was not the same as a 'character interface' - the traditional DOS command prompt environment that we looked at when we studied chapter 10.

Today, string processing is making a comeback. VB.NET has much better 'console' support than VB 6. And new formats such as XML are really just strings in disguise. In fact, your VB program itself always has been a character string 'text' file. We used that fact when we compiled a program without using Visual Studio in Chapter 10.

So ... there's much more to be said about strings and text than Chapter 12 of the book covers. And I have a few corrections to what is there. I don't want to 'string' you along anymore so let's jump right into the chapter.