Description
C# File I/O, which allows file handling, is a very important feature for many web applications. Microsoft .NET Framework offers System.IO namespace, that provides various classes to enable the developers to do File I/O (Input / Output operations).
C# programming language has the ability to write information to a file and read it back in. This is often called "file input and output", or simply "file I/O". Writing to files and reading from them is actually a very simple task in C#.
Objectives
- Using the File class for reading and writing data.
- Using the File and FileInfo class to manipulate files.
- Using the DirectoryInfo and Directory classes to manipulate directories.
Streams
There are two main streams: the Input stream and the Output stream. The input stream is used for reading data from file (read operation) and the output stream is used for writing into the file (write operation).
- StreamReader
- StreamWriter
I/O
Classes
Below are few of C# I/O Classes:
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| File | Modify Files |
| FileStream | Read and write data in files |
| MemoryStream | Random access of data from memory |
| StreamReader | Byte stream character reading |
| StreamWriter | Writing Character to stream |
| Directory | Operation on Directories |
| BufferedStream | Allow temporary storage of stream of bytes |
Example
[csharp]
using System;
using System.IO;
namespace SPLessons
{
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
using (FileStream stream = File.Open("D:\\splesson.txt", FileMode.Create))
using (BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(stream))
{
writer.Write(303);
writer.Write(720);
}
using (FileStream stream = File.Open("D:\\splesson.txt", FileMode.Open))
using (BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(stream))
{
int a = reader.ReadInt32();
int b = reader.ReadInt32();
Console.WriteLine(a);
Console.WriteLine(b);
}
}
}
}
[/csharp]
Output:
Note
File I/O is a very powerful and important thing to be capable to perform. Nearly every program out there will want to be able to do this in some capacity. There's, of course, more advanced things you can do with file I/O, like reading and writing XML files, and C# provides tools to make writing XML files much simpler.