Best way to extract text from a word file

[Nick Burch <ni...@torchbox.com>]

Hi All

I'm thinking about adding a simple text extractor utility to hwpf, since 
everyone is currently rolling their own, and that's not very 
programmer efficient!

When I get text out, I normally use something like:
 	StringBuffer text = new StringBuffer();
 	Range r = wdoc.getRange();
 	for(int i=0; i < r.numParagraphs(); i++) {
 		Paragraph p = r.getParagraph(i);
 		text.append(p.text());
 	}

However, I've also seen people advocate an approach like:
 	StringBuffer text = new StringBuffer();
 	Iterator textPieces = doc.getTextTable().getTextPieces().iterator();
 	while (textPieces.hasNext()) {
         	TextPiece piece = (TextPiece) textPieces.next();

 	        String encoding = "Cp1252";
 	        if (piece.usesUnicode()) {
 	                encoding = "UTF-16LE";
 	        }
 	        text.append(new String(piece.getRawBytes(), encoding));
 	}
(normally accompanied by some stripping out of macros)

Is there any reason why I shouldn't use the first version?

Nick

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