Name
Stream
Synopsis
This class is the basic
building block of I/O in the .NET
Framework. Many types of application use a Stream
in one way or another. When calling
System.Console.WriteLine( ), you use a
TextWriter, which contains a
StreamWriter. When you design an ASP.NET
application, the System.Web.UI.Page uses a
System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream. In fact,
whenever you access a remote database server you are using a
NetworkStream.
To determine whether a given Stream can read,
write, or seek, check CanRead,
CanWrite, or CanSeek,
respectively. If your stream can seek, you may seek forward or
backward using Seek( ). Length
reveals the length of the stream, which can also be set by calling
SetLength( ), and Position
allows you to check your current position in the stream.
To perform asynchronous I/O, call BeginRead( ) or
BeginWrite( ). Notification of an asynchronous
operation comes in two ways: either via an
System.AsyncCallback delegate callback passed in
as part of the BeginRead( )/BeginWrite( ) call, or else by calling the EndRead( ) or EndWrite( ) method explicitly,
which blocks the calling thread until the async operation completes.
Streams usually hold on to a precious resource (a network connection
or a file handle), which should be freed as soon as it is not needed
any more. Because destruction is completely nondeterministic with
garbage collection, be sure to call Close( ) at
the end of the Stream’s useful
lifetime. (Alternatively, wrap the use of the
Stream in a using block ...