How to read from a Text File Faster/Smarter?

Here you go:

static void Main() { foreach(var part in ReadParts("Raw.txt")) { // all the fields for the part are available; I'm just showing // one of them for illustration Console.WriteLine(part["ID"]); } } static IEnumerable<IDictionary<string,string>> ReadParts(string path) { using(var reader = File.OpenText(path)) { var current = new Dictionary<string, string>(); string line; while((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null) { if(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(line)) continue; if(line.StartsWith("ENDCARD:")) { yield return current; current = new Dictionary<string, string>(); } else { var parts = line.Split(':'); current[parts[0].Trim()] = parts[1].Trim().TrimEnd(';'); } } if (current.Count > 0) yield return current; } } 

What this does is: create an iterator block (a state machine that reads and "yields" data as it is iterated; it does not read the entire file in one go) that scans the lines; if it is the end of a card, the card is "yielded"; otherwise it adds the data into a dictionary for storage.

Note: if you have your own class that represents the data, then you could use something like reflection or FastMember to set the values by name.

This does not use LINQ directly; however, it is implemented as an enumerable sequence, which is the building block of LINQ-to-Objects, so you could consume this with LINQ, i.e.

var data = ReadParts("some.file").Skip(2).First(x => x["ID"] == "123");