Beginning Object-Oriented Programming with C#

Chapter 13

Using Disk Data Files

What you will learn in this chapter:

• Two basic file types: text and binary
• The advantages and disadvantages of each file type
• Computer streams
• Sequential files
• Random access files
• Serialization and deserialization
• Multiple document interface (MDI) programs
• Writing program menus

wrox.com code downloads for this chapter

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter at www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=9781118336922 on the Download Code tab. The code in the Chapter13 folder is individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

This chapter shows you how to use disk data files. If you think about it, computers would lose much of their functionality if there weren't a way to permanently store, or persist, the data generated by a computer. Things that you take for granted today, such as making an airline reservation, must have been a nightmare before computers were in widespread use.

Up to this point you have written programs whose usefulness ended when the program ended. After you master the contents of this chapter, you can write programs that can store data, enabling you to recall that data at some later time. Programs take on a whole new light when you know how to persist data.

Let's get started.

Directories

Anytime I want to explore a new area in C#, the first thing I do is find out which namespaces are involved with that area. Because you're going to learn about file input and output (I/O), I simply typed in using System. ...