Replace All Text In File

[scriptor2016]

Greetings

I am trying to:

1. read all contents in an existing .txt file
2. wipe out all said contents, and replace them with new contents
3. update/save the file

How do I do this without deleting the file? So far I have come up with this script but I admit, I have been scratching my head over this one for months on and off:

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FileRead, Contents, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;read all text in the file
StringReplace, NewTextVar, Contents, %Contents%, ThisIsTheNewText, All ;assign "ThisIsTheNewText" as the new text to be written to the file
Contents= ;wipe out all original text in the file
FileAppend, %Contents%%NewTextVar%, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;write the new text to the file
Return

I am really out to lunch here. What am I doing wrong here?

[Rohwedder]

Hallo,
i recommend to delete the file!
But if you are a masochist: https://autohotkey.com/docs/objects/File.htm

[Kobaltauge]

The documentation recommends deleting the file before.
But you can use the file object like Rohwedder wrote. And instead for appending you overwrite the file.

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file := FileOpen("MyTextFile.txt", "w") 
file.write()
file.close()

[electrone77]

you might wanna try it with tf.ahk, its a lib you need to download, however i am not sure how it handles the files.
Heres the info
download
example codes (see 1st code there is "!" before File.txt. i guess it overwrites the file):

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TF_ReplaceInLines("!File.txt","1,3,9","","key","lock") ;  update source file, replace "key" with "lock" in lines 1, 3 and 9

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TF_RegExReplace("File.txt","im)^(.*)$","[$1]") ; pass on a file, wrap all lines in []

or

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F=!file.txt 
TF_Replace(F, "this", "that") ; Replace the word "this" with "that" and overwrite original file.txt

[scriptor2016]

Thanks guys! I was able to use a combination of file.write() and fileappend to get the results I needed.

I had thought it would be an easy task to just read the text file, replace the text, then overwrite the file - but I had to search long and hard for information on how to do it. I was hoping to avoid deleting the file and then saving a new one - my thinking was that accessing the hard drive twice just for the one task would cause a mini-delay that might cause the rest of my script to misfire. However, it IS possible and now it works

[scriptor2016]

I ended up going with this

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FileRead, MyContents, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;this reads whatever text is in the text file we are working with
file := FileOpen("C:\MyTextFile.txt", "w") ;this wipes out all text in the file - does it overwrite it in this line as well? Either way, it works as planned
file.close() ;this closes the file - at this stage, the text file is empty and overwritten (saved) to the hard drive
FileAppend, ThisIsTheNewText, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;this writes "ThisIsTheNewText" to the text file (without the quotes)

[Tigerlily]

I ended up going with this

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FileRead, MyContents, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;this reads whatever text is in the text file we are working with
file := FileOpen("C:\MyTextFile.txt", "w") ;this wipes out all text in the file - does it overwrite it in this line as well? Either way, it works as planned
file.close() ;this closes the file - at this stage, the text file is empty and overwritten (saved) to the hard drive
FileAppend, ThisIsTheNewText, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;this writes "ThisIsTheNewText" to the text file (without the quotes)

Thanks for sharing your solution scriptor2016 I had been pondering this issue this week

[scriptor2016]

after studying this some more, this is another way to do it:

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FileRead, MyContents, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;read the contents of the text file
file := FileOpen("C:\MyTextFile.txt", "w") ;this wipes out all text in the file and overwrites it as a blank .txt file
file.write("ThisIsTheNewText") ;this writes "ThisIsTheNewText" to the text file (without the quotes)
file.close() ;this closes the file

So I guess that this script still accesses the hard drive twice: once to overwrite the .txt file as a bkank file (in line 2), and then the second time to write the new text to the file (in line 3). I guess there's no way to do it in one go.

I thought maybe the script could

a) read the text file as a variable
b) clear the variable
c) assign the new text to the variable
d) write the variable to the text document and overwrite the file

--therefore accessing the hard drive only once.

Either way, the above code works as well

[Kobaltauge]

Thank you for testing.
Just learnd that the line

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file := FileOpen("MyTextFile.txt", "w")

overwrites the file. I thought it opens only the handler and

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file.write()

was needed to overwrite with an empty line.

[labrint]

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file := FileOpen("MyTextFile.txt", "w")

This code could be the most beautiful one liner I have seen. Basically it saves you the trouble of FileDelete before appending. Imagine you have a file you need to update specifically positioned on the desktop and don't want it moved, FileDelete would move it. This doesn't. Does not require tf library. Beautiful. You little genius you.

[TrackQser]

@scriptor2016

Your code works for me, too.

But I am not sure if it is reliable.

Initially "overwriting" the file with the FileOpen "w"-option all file contents are lost if the app crashes before the file.write().

I hoped AHK would offer a function to accomplish this in one step ...

[BartmanEH]

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FileRead, MyContents, C:\MyTextFile.txt ;read the contents of the text file
file := FileOpen("C:\MyTextFile.txt", "w") ;this wipes out all text in the file and overwrites it as a blank .txt file
file.write("ThisIsTheNewText") ;this writes "ThisIsTheNewText" to the text file (without the quotes)
file.close() ;this closes the file

[...]
Either way, the above code works as well

When I try this method on a Windows10 VM, the FileOpen fails every time--even with a sleep, 1000 before it. The only thing that works for me is:

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FileRead, currentLog, log.txt       			;read current log data from file
currentLog := newLogData . "`n" . currentLog
;sleep, 1000
;file := FileOpen(log.txt, "w")      			;wipes out all content in the file and overwrites it as an empty file or creates file (fails!)
;file.write(currentLog)                      	;writes to the file
;file.close()                                	;closes the file
FileDelete, log.txt								;alternate method that works part 1/2
FileAppend, %currentLog%, log.txt				;alternate method that works part 2/2