Programming C# 3.0, 5th Edition

Reading and Writing Data

Reading and writing data is accomplished with the Stream class. Remember streams? This is a chapter about streams.^[18]

Stream supports synchronous and asynchronous reads and writes. The .NET Framework provides a number of classes derived from Stream, including FileStream, MemoryStream, and NetworkStream. In addition, there is a BufferedStream class that provides buffered I/O, and can be used with any of the other stream classes. Table 22-5 summarizes the principal classes involved with I/O.

Table 22-5. Principal I/O classes of the .NET Framework

Class	Use
Stream	Abstract class that supports reading and writing bytes
BinaryReader/BinaryWriter	Read and write encoded strings and primitive datatypes to and from streams
File, FileInfo, Directory, DirectoryInfo	Provide implementations for the abstract FileSystemInfo classes, including creating, moving, renaming, and deleting files and directories
FileStream	For reading to and from File objects; supports random access to files; opens files synchronously by default; supports asynchronous file access
TextReader, TextWriter, StringReader, StringWriter	TextReader and TextWriter are abstract classes designed for Unicode character I/O; StringReader and StringWriter write to and from strings, allowing your input and output to be either a stream or a string
BufferedStream	A stream that adds buffering to another stream such as a NetworkStream; BufferedStreams can improve the performance of the stream to which they are attached, but note ...