Professional C# 7 and .NET Core 2.0, 7th Edition

22Files and Streams

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Exploring the directory structure
• Moving, copying, and deleting files and folders
• Reading and writing text in files
• Using streams to read and write files
• Using readers and writers to read and write files
• Compressing files
• Monitoring file changes
• Communicating using pipes
• Using Windows Runtime streams

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The Wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com on the Download Code tab. The source code is also available at https://github.com/ProfessionalCSharp/ProfessionalCSharp7 in the directory FilesAndStreams.

The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

• DriveInformation
• WorkingWithFilesAndFolders
• StreamSamples
• ReaderWriterSamples
• CompressFileSample
• FileMonitor
• MemoryMappedFiles
• NamedPipes
• AnonymousPipes
• WindowsAppEditor

INTRODUCTION

When you’re reading and writing to files and directories you can use simple APIs, or you can use advanced ones that offer more features. You also have to differentiate between .NET classes and functionality offered from the Windows Runtime. From Universal Windows Platform (UWP) Windows apps, you don’t have access to the file system in any directory; you have access only to specific directories. Alternatively, you can let the user pick files. This chapter covers all these options. You’ll read and write files by using a simple API and get into more features by using streams. You’ll use both .NET types and types ...