Determining the Length of a Non-Document Text File

Summary: If you use a macro to create and work with text files, you can find out the length of those files using a simple command. This tip explains how ot use the LOF command to get the info you need. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

Several other WordTips have discussed opening, reading, writing, appending, and closing text files. Another command associated with sequential text files is the LOF function. If used on an open file, it returns the length of the file, in bytes. In other words, you can determine the number of characters in the file. This can come in handy if you are processing a text file character by character. You can determine the length of the file and then read that many characters before you finish processing the file. The following code fragment is an example of how the LOF function is used:

Open "MyFile.Dat" for Input as #1
FileLen = LOF(1)

Tip #1381 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Determining the Length of a Non-Document Text File