The System::IO Namespace

The System::IO Namespace

The System::IO namespace contains all the classes that are used for binary and text I/O, as well as classes that help you to work with files and directories. The following table lists the main classes in the namespace.

Class	Description
BinaryReader	Reads primitive data types as binary values
BinaryWriter	Writes primitive data types as binary values
BufferedStream	A stream class that buffers reads and writes to another stream
Directory	Has static methods for working with directories
DirectoryInfo	Has nonstatic methods for working with directories
File	Has static methods for working with files
FileInfo	Has nonstatic methods for working with files
FileStream	A class for reading and writing files using a stream
FileSystemInfo	The abstract base class for DirectoryInfo and FileInfo
FileSystemWatcher	Watches for changes to the file system and raises events when changes occur
IOException	The exception thrown by classes in the System::IO namespace
MemoryStream	A stream class that reads and writes memory
Path	Helps you work with directory strings in a platform-independent way
Stream	The abstract base class for all the stream classes
StreamReader	A TextReader that reads characters from a byte stream
StreamWriter	A TextWriter that writes characters to a byte stream
StringReader	A TextReader that reads from a string
StringWriter	A TextWriter that writes to a string
TextReader	The abstract base class for StreamReader and StringReader
TextWriter	The abstract base class for StreamWriter and StringWriter

The I/O-oriented classes in System::IO can be divided into the following three groups:

• The Stream classes, which are designed for I/O of streams of bytes

• The BinaryReader and BinaryWriter classes, which are used to input and output .NET primitive types, such as Int32 and Double, in binary form

• The TextReader and TextWriter classes, which are used for character- mode I/O

This chapter focuses on the latter two groups.