Delete specific line from a text file?

I need to delete an exact line from a text file but I cannot for the life of me workout how to go about doing this.

Any suggestions or examples would be greatly appreciated?

Related Questions

Efficient way to delete a line from a text file (C#)


Solution 1:

If the line you want to delete is based on the content of the line:

string line = null;
string line_to_delete = "the line i want to delete";

using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("C:\\input")) {
    using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter("C:\\output")) {
        while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null) {
            if (String.Compare(line, line_to_delete) == 0)
                continue;

            writer.WriteLine(line);
        }
    }
}

Or if it is based on line number:

string line = null;
int line_number = 0;
int line_to_delete = 12;

using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("C:\\input")) {
    using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter("C:\\output")) {
        while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null) {
            line_number++;

            if (line_number == line_to_delete)
                continue;

            writer.WriteLine(line);
        }
    }
}

Solution 2:

The best way to do this is to open the file in text mode, read each line with ReadLine(), and then write it to a new file with WriteLine(), skipping the one line you want to delete.

There is no generic delete-a-line-from-file function, as far as I know.

Solution 3:

One way to do it if the file is not very big is to load all the lines into an array:

string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines("filename.txt");
string[] newLines = RemoveUnnecessaryLine(lines);
File.WriteAllLines("filename.txt", newLines);