In the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO (Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll) namespace lives the TextFieldParser class.
This useful little class can be used to parse structured text files – either delimited or fixed length. You can iterate over the lines in the file and extract the data through the ReadFields method.
Since it is provided by Microsoft, you can use it in environments that do not allow “third-party” libraries and as it is a .NET libarary you can use it in any .NET language (yes, C# and F# included) – just import the library.
The examples on MSDN are all in VB.NET, but are easily translated to other .NET dialects.
– How to: Read From Comma-Delimited Text Files
– How to: Read From Fixed-width Text Files
– How to: Read From Text Files with Multiple Formats