Beginning C# 3.0

13.3. FileInfo Class

In Listing 13-2, I commented out a statement that uses the FileInfo class. This class provides a lot of details about the files you find on the system. Some of the more important properties and methods are presented in Table 13-5.

Table 13-5. Table 13-5

Method or Property	Description
AppendText()	Appends text for the current FileInfo object using a StreamWriter
CopyTo()	Copies an existing file to a new file
Create()	Creates a new file
CreateText()	Creates a StreamWriter object that writes a new text file
Delete()	Deletes a file
Equals()	Determines if two FileInfo objects are equal
MoveTo()	Moves a file to a new location with the option to rename it
Open()	Opens a file with various read/write privileges
Replace()	Replaces a specified file with contents of current FileInfo file
Attributes	Gets the file attributes of a specified file
CreationTime	Gets or sets the creation time for a file
Directory	Gets an instance of the parent directory
DirectoryName	Returns the full path name as a string
Exists	Determines if a file exists
Extension	Returns a string representation of a file's extension
FullName	Returns the complete path of a file or directory
LastAccessTime	Returns the last time the file was accessed
Length	Returns the number of bytes in a file
Name	Returns the name of the current file

The tables and their associated methods and properties should give you enough information about directories and files for you to manipulate them in your programs. I draw on several of these properties and methods later ...