David Cumps

StreamReader Class and StreamWriter Class

Part of my 2008 study notes for exam 70-536 (.NET Framework 2.0).

Overview

  • Provides extra helper methods intended to read a stream as a string.
  • Calling Close() on a StreamReader will close the underlying Stream as well.

Good practice

  • Remember to call Close on a stream.
  • Use ‘using’ statements when you want the stream to be automatically closed at the end.

Examples

Read a File

// FileStream is simply a stream around a file, overriding Stream methods
FileStream a = new FileStream(@"C:\Public\Test.txt", FileMode.Open);
 
while (a.Position != a.Length)
{
    Console.Write((char)a.ReadByte());
}
 
a.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
 
StreamReader b = new StreamReader(a);
Console.WriteLine(b.ReadToEnd());
b.Close();

Writing a File

// FileStream is simply a stream around a file, overriding Stream methods
FileStream a = new FileStream(@"C:\Public\Test.txt", FileMode.Create);
 
using (var writer = new StreamWriter(a))
{
    writer.AutoFlush = true;
    writer.WriteLine("Hello World");
}
 
// The FileStream has been closed because of the using statement
a = new FileStream(@"C:\Public\Test.txt", FileMode.Open);
StreamReader b = new StreamReader(a);
Console.WriteLine(b.ReadToEnd());
b.Close();
 
// Simple version if you only need to read the entire file
Console.WriteLine(File.ReadAllText(@"C:\Public\Test.txt"));
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