# Searching and reading data as variables

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/searching-and-reading-data-as-variables/49893>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [April 27, 2004, 5:44pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/searching-and-reading-data-as-variables/49893 "2004-04-27T17:44:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![feiticeria](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/67e7ee/32.png) [@feiticeria](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/feiticeria)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 5:44pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/searching-and-reading-data-as-variables/49893/1 "2004-04-27T17:44:32Z")

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Hopefully someone can help me out, I’m trying to figure out how to search through a .txt file to find a match from a input put in through flash and return which line its in the text file…ie: input, “flash” and i search through the .txt file to find a match and return what line its on?

And my second part of the question, how can I use cordinates to search through a .txt file and return the data as a integer? Basically what I’m trying to do is have a list of data setup with a name and value beside it and be able to retrieve a specific value for each name, ie:

_flash 4563  
kirupa 2305  
…  
blah 2350_

I’m not too familiar with actionscript, I’ve done some java a few years ago, and I’ve noticed some similarities, so hopefully this won’t be all new to me. If someone can help me out with this, or point me to a tutorial of some sort, i’d appreciate it