C# 7.0 All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 3

Fishing the File Stream

IN THIS CHAPTER

Reading and writing data files

Using the Stream classes

Using the using statement

Dealing with input/output errors

Catching fish in a stream can prove to be quite a thrill to those who engage in fishing. Anglers often boast of the difficulty of getting that one special fish out of the stream and into a basket. Fishing the “file stream” with C# isn’t quite so thrilling, but it’s one of those indispensable programming skills.

File access refers to the storage and retrieval of data on the disk. This chapter covers basic text-file input/output. Reading and writing data from databases are covered in Chapter 2 of this minibook, and reading and writing information to the Internet are covered in Chapter 4.

Going Where the Fish Are: The File Stream

The console application programs in this book mostly take their input from, and send their output to, the console. Programs outside this chapter have better — or at least different — things to bore you with than file manipulation. It’s important not to confuse their message with the extra baggage ...