'About #8 (backspace)' Thread RSS Feed

About #8 (backspace)

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:27:27 -0700

I have a word in a text file that I want to erase. It appears that the function Seek doesn't work for text files. So, I found that #8 is the ASCII code for backspace. The problem is that when I use Write(file, #8) or Write(file, #8, ' ', #8) Notepad shows a strange icon in the file, and the word remains in the file.

Re: About #8 (backspace)

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:32:05 -0700

: I have a word in a text file that I want to erase. It appears that the function Seek doesn't work for text files. So, I found that #8 is the ASCII code for backspace. The problem is that when I use Write(file, #8) or Write(file, #8, ' ', #8) Notepad shows a strange icon in the file, and the word remains in the file.
:
The #8 character is seen as a normal character when placed in a file. To delete a word from a text file, you need to copy the file without the word in question into a new file. Here is an example, which removes all words "the":

var
  sf, df: textfile;
  s: string;
begin
  Assign(sf, 'source.txt');
  Reset(sf);
  Assign(df, 'dest.txt');
  Rewrite(df);
  while not eof(sf) do
  begin  
    readln(sf, s); { read a line } 
    while Pos('the', s) > 0 do { remove all "the"s from the line }
      Delete(s, Pos('the', s), 3);
    writeln(df, s); { write it to the new file }
  end;
  Close(df);   
  Close(sf);
end;

Re: About #8 (backspace)

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:53:00 -0700

: : I have a word in a text file that I want to erase. It appears that the function Seek doesn't work for text files. So, I found that #8 is the ASCII code for backspace. The problem is that when I use Write(file, #8) or Write(file, #8, ' ', #8) Notepad shows a strange icon in the file, and the word remains in the file.
: :
: The #8 character is seen as a normal character when placed in a file. To delete a word from a text file, you need to copy the file without the word in question into a new file. Here is an example, which removes all words "the":
:

: var
:   sf, df: textfile;
:   s: string;
: begin
:   Assign(sf, 'source.txt');
:   Reset(sf);
:   Assign(df, 'dest.txt');
:   Rewrite(df);
:   while not eof(sf) do
:   begin  
:     readln(sf, s); { read a line } 
:     while Pos('the', s) > 0 do { remove all "the"s from the line }
:       Delete(s, Pos('the', s), 3);
:     writeln(df, s); { write it to the new file }
:   end;
:   Close(df);   
:   Close(sf);
: end;
:

:
Thanks for the help