[vb .net] search a textbox?

[bangbang023 Veteran]

Can anyone here point me in the direction of how I would go about searching through text in a textbox similar to the find function in IE or notepad? I have been looking for an hour and have found not documentation on it.

[James Rose]

The function you are looking for is INSTR (in string). It returns a numeric value for the place it finds your text

Dim sSearch As String

Dim iWhere As Int32

sSearch = "james"

TextBox2.Text = "Where is james"

iWhere = InStr(TextBox2.Text, sSearch)

MsgBox(iWhere)

Hope this helps

[bangbang023 Veteran]

hmm ok thanks, that's a major start off. Now I just need to implement it and figure out how to select the search result. Also, I need to figure out how to get it so it can keep searching, like the notepad search functionality.

[James Rose]

I see, so you want me to write ALL your code do ya? Ya know, I do get PAID for this sort of thing ALL WEEK LONG ;)

Ok, so here we go. To select it you'd want the following (add to the previous code)

iSearchLen = Len(sSearch)

'This will select your text

With TextBox1

.SelectStart = iWhere

.SelLength = iSearchLen

End With

As for selecting the NEXT instance you still use the the INSTR function. It's first parameter (optional) is the point at which you start your search.

So for the next selection yo'd have

iWhere = instr((iWhere + 1), TextBox1, sSearch)

Get it?

[lexecutil]

You should be using string.IndexOf and LastIndexOf as far as I know...

Dan

[bangbang023 Veteran]

actually, I didn't want you to write it for me. I thank you for doing it, but I want to do it my own. It was more or less just me thinking out loud.

[James Rose]

Bang,

No worries really. I have done this for a living for a long time, and I have to deal with "pro" developers who don't know this stuff either <sigh> I'm happy to help out, otherwise I wouldn't have said anything, let alone posted the code sample.

Peace,

James

[bangbang023 Veteran]

Thanks dude.

[cesardrgn]

jameswjrose that is helpful. thank dud...