Professional C# 2012 and .NET 4.5

Chapter 24

Manipulating Files and the Registry

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Exploring the directory structure
• Moving, copying, and deleting files and folders
• Reading and writing text in files
• Reading and writing keys in the registry
• Reading and writing to isolated storage

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at http://www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=1118314425 on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

• BinaryFileReader
• DriveViewer
• FileProperties
• FilePropertiesAndMovement
• MappedMemoryFiles
• ReadingACLs
• ReadingACLsFromDirectory
• ReadingFiles
• ReadWriteText

FILE AND THE REGISTRY

This chapter examines how to perform tasks involving reading from and writing to files and the C# system registry. Microsoft has provided very intuitive object models covering these areas, and in this chapter you learn how to use .NET base classes to perform the listed tasks. In the case of file system operations, the relevant classes are almost all found in the System.IO namespace, whereas registry operations are dealt with by classes in the Microsoft.Win32 namespace.

NOTE The .NET base classes also include a number of classes and interfaces in the System.Runtime.Serialization namespace. concerned with serialization — that is, the process of converting data (for example, the contents of a document) into a stream of bytes for storage. This chapter does not focus on these classes; it focuses on the ...