Programming C#

Reading and Writing Data

Reading and writin g data is accomplished with the Stream class. Remember streams? This is a chapter about streams.^[9]

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, which provides buffered I/O and which can be used in conjunction with any of the other stream classes. The principal classes involved with I/O are summarized in Table 21-5.

Table 21-5. Principle 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 ...