Microsoft® .NET Compact Framework (Core Reference)

Chapter 10. Input and Output

The .NET Compact Framework provides powerful features for reading and writing all types of files, from simple text files using character encodings, to pure binary files that must be read as bytes. Features exist for moving the read/write pointer through a file and for copying, moving, and deleting entire files. A file can be an actual file on the local device, a remote file on a network, or an object that is not a file at all, but is simply a stream of bytes either in memory or arriving at a socket or other network connection. You can read and write streams synchronously, where the call you make blocks until the file operation completes. Or, in the case of NetworkStream objects, you can read and write streams asynchronously, ...