Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference

STREAM

The Stream class defines properties and methods that derived stream classes must provide. These let the program perform relatively generic tasks with streams such as determining whether the stream allows writing.

The following table describes the Stream class’s most useful properties:

PROPERTY	PURPOSE
CanRead	Returns True if the stream supports reading.
CanSeek	Returns True if the stream supports seeking to a particular position in the stream.
CanTimeout	Returns True if the stream supports timing out of read and write operations.
CanWrite	Returns True if the stream supports writing.
Length	Returns the number of bytes in the stream.
Position	Returns the stream’s current position in its bytes. For a stream that supports seeking, the program can set this value to move to a particular position.
ReadTimeout	Determines the number of milliseconds that a read operation will wait before timing out.
WriteTimeout	Determines the number of milliseconds that a write operation will wait before timing out.

The following table describes the Stream class’s most useful methods:

METHOD	PURPOSE
BeginRead	Begins an asynchronous read.
BeginWrite	Begins an asynchronous write.
Close	Closes the stream and releases any resources it uses (such as file handles).
EndRead	Waits for an asynchronous read to finish.
EndWrite	Ends an asynchronous write.
Flush	Flushes data from the stream’s buffers into the underlying storage medium (device, file, memory, and so forth). ...