Why Won't My Array Sort? (Visual Basic) - arrays

Question

I'm working on a project, for school, that reads text from a .txt file to an array. After doing that, I'm supposed to sort the array, alphabetically, and then list the contents in a listbox. Here is my code:
Imports System.IO
Public Class Form1
'Allow array to be accessed by the entire program
Public books(1) As String
Private Sub btnView_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnView.Click
'Declare variables
Dim sr As New StreamReader("C:\Users\Bryson\Desktop\BooksinStock.txt")
Dim book As String
Dim i As Integer = 0
'Establish loop to read contents of the text file into the array and list the array in the listbox
'the sr.Peek = -1 simply means that the reader has reached the end of the file and there is nothing more to be read
Do Until sr.Peek = -1
book = sr.ReadLine()
'ReDim allows the array to grow with the set amount of books in text file
ReDim books(books.Length + 1)
books(i) = book
i += 1
Loop
Array.Sort(books)
lstBoxInventory.Items.Add(books(i))
End Sub
End Class
However, when I run the program, I receive an error on the lstBoxInventory.Items.Add(books(i)) line that says "an unhandled exception of the type 'System.ArgumentNullException' occurred in System.Windows.Forms.Dll
I've tried to lay the code out in various ways to get the sort to work but keep coming up short. Does anyone know how to get rid of this null error?

Answer 1

The problem happening because "i" is larger than the highest index
Do Until sr.Peek = -1
book = sr.ReadLine()
ReDim books(books.Length + 1)
books(i) = book
i += 1 'This is adding 1 to the very end
Loop
Array.Sort(books)
lstBoxInventory.Items.Add(books(i)) 'When the items are being added it is trying to add an extra i that does not exist
edit
Honestly I would change the format to use ReadAllLines and list(of String)
Something like (Im writing code from memory)
Dim bookList as new List(of String)
Dim bookTextFile as String() = File.ReadAllLines("C:\booklist.txt")
for each book as String in bookTextFile
bookList.add(book)
next
bookList.Sort
Edit Again
Just using this
Dim bookList As String() = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines("C:\Users\Bryson\Desktop\BooksinStock.txt")
creates a single dimension array ..
Strings() are single Arrays String(,) are two dimensional Arrays
Honestly your whole homework could be
Dim bookList As String() = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines("C:\Users\Bryson\Desktop\BooksinStock.txt")
Array.Sort(BookList)
boom - done.
Test it using
for each book as String in BookList
Msgbox(book)
next
You could do
Dim bookList As String() = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines("C:\Users\Bryson\Desktop\BooksinStock.txt")
Dim books(bookList.Length - 1) As String 'This is the same as ReDim
For x As Integer = 0 To bookList.Length - 1
books(x) = bookList(x)
Next
Array.Sort(books)
but you would literally be saying bookList = books
But.... if you just want to get your code working, just try this
lstBoxInventory.Items.Add(books(i -1)) 'This takes away the extra i that you added