22. File IO Basics

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Chapter 22. FILE I/O BASICS

You will learn about the following in this chapter:

• Input streams and output streams

• Text files and character streams

• Binary files and binary streams

• Four classes from the System.IO namespace that are commonly used to handle files and streams

• How to represent a file in your program with the FileInfo class

• The character stream classes StreamWriter and StreamReader

• The binary stream class FileStream

I/O is short for program input and program output. Program input refers to data (numbers, characters, and bytes) flowing into a program from a source (keyboard, file, remote computer, or something similar). Program output refers to data flowing out from a program to a destination (screen, file, remote computer, or something similar).

This chapter provides a brief presentation of important file I/O concepts and introduces you to a few selected classes located in the .NET Framework that are commonly used to perform file I/O in C#.

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