These are stream helper classes that make it easier to read and write text data onto an underlying stream. The following table describes the TextReader class’s most useful methods.
| Method | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Close | Closes the reader and releases any resources that it is using. |
| Peek | Reads the next character from the text without changing the reader’s state so other methods can read the character later. |
| Read | Reads data from the input. Overloaded versions of this method read a single character, or an array of characters up to a specified length. |
| ReadBlock | Reads data from the input into an array of characters. |
| ReadLine | Reads a line of characters from the input and returns the data in a string. |
| ReadToEnd | Reads any remaining characters in the input and returns them in a string. |
The following table describes the TextWriter class’s most useful properties.
| Property | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Encoding | Specifies the data’s encoding (ASCII, UTF-8, Unicode, and so forth). |
| FormatProvider | Returns an object that controls formatting. |
| NewLine | Gets or sets the stream’s new-line sequence. |
The following table describes the TextWriter class’s most useful methods.
| Method | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Close | Closes the writer and releases any resources it uses. |
| Flush | Writes any buffered data into the underlying output. |
| Write | Writes a value into the output. This method has many overloaded versions that write characters, arrays of characters, integers, strings, unsigned 64-bit integers, and so forth. |
| WriteLine | Writes data into the output followed by the new-line sequence. |