ok people, my first post, im relativly new (but still expirienced) to vb express and currently making a login section for my project...

i have a save, load and delete button where the user would be able to choose from.. i have the save section working where the user would enter thier username and password and it would save to a text box located in c:\ .. that all works.. with my load section i ask the user to input thier username and password, and i read my text file which is in c:\ and tell it to steamread etc.etc.. eventually the code gets the text inside the text file and puts it into a multiline textbox on the form.. at this point everything works fine.. here is my problem:

i need to search this multiline textbox to find the username which the user inputs eg:

username = textbox1.text

i want to the code to search the whole multiline textbox to find this STRING username (textbox1.text) and if the multiline textbox DOES have this specific text then it would display a msgbox such as "Enter the game"

here is my code:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

Dim file As System.IO.StreamReader


If System.IO.File.Exists("C:\pokemonlogin.txt") = True Then

If txtlogin.Text <> "" And txtpassword.Text <> "" Then

file = System.IO.File.OpenText("c:\pokemonlogin.txt")
'WHERE TEXTBOX3 is the multiline text box
TextBox3.Text = file.ReadToEnd

'(problem starts from from here)---->
If textbox3.something which represents string = the string in txtlogin.text then
MsgBox("well done")

'Else

' MsgBox("Please enter a REAL username or create one!!!")

End If

End If

Else

MsgBox("Pokemon Blue Gem Arcade does not detect ANY previous users, please create one")
Me.Hide()
Newplayer.Show()

End I

My problem is I DONT KNOW THE COMMAND TO SAY IF A SPECIFIC STRING IN ONE TEXT BOX EQUALS ANOTHER STRING IN ANOTHER TEXT BOX THEN DISPLAY MESSAGE
i dont want the whole text of one textbox to equal another whole text of another textbox.. i want it to search and find only a specific text (which is a variable, which the user inputs)

EG: user types in textbox1 "johnny"
textbox2 reads a file from c:\ then displays it in textbox2
a command/function which represents "a find string( or sumthing like that" will use the two textboxes to compare each other..

GET MY DRIFT??
Please help me out people... if im not clear enough then please ask.. all help and code would be much appriciated!!!

If I have interpreted your problem correctly then this should be simple. Otherwise you will need to clarify a little more.

1.) The input for TextBox1 is "Johnny"
2.) You read in your text file into Textbox2.
3.) You compare by:

If TextBox2.Text.Contains(TextBox1.Text) Then
    '* Your Welcome Code Here
EndIf







Best Regards,
Earl Francis

I'm a little confused by the original post. The term "textbox" was used in a few places that I would have expected the term "text file" so I'm not clear which was intended.

If you have the option to decide how you are going to store information in a file, why not use a better file format that is easier to use such as XML? You could store the login information as XML so there's no question of what text from the file constitutes the data.

-Peter