BinaryReader and BinaryWriter

These are stream helper classes that make it easier to read and write data in specific formats onto an underlying stream. The following table describes the BinaryReader class’s most useful methods.

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Method	Purpose
Close	Closes the BinaryReader and its underlying stream.
PeekChar	Reads the reader’s next character, but does not advance the reader’s position, so other methods can still read the character later.
Read	Reads characters from the stream and advances the reader’s position.
ReadBoolean	Reads a Boolean from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 1 byte.
ReadByte	Reads a byte from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 1 byte.
ReadBytes	Reads a number of bytes from the stream into a byte array and advances the reader’s position by that number of bytes.
ReadChar	Reads a character from the stream and advances the reader’s position according to the stream’s encoding and the character.
ReadChars	Reads a number of characters from the stream, returns the results in a character array, and advances the reader’s position according to the stream’s encoding and the number of characters.
ReadDecimal	Reads a decimal value from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 16 bytes.
ReadDouble	Reads an 8-byte floating-point value from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 8 bytes.
ReadInt16	Reads a 2-byte signed integer from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 2 bytes.
ReadInt32	Reads a 4-byte signed integer from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 4 bytes.
ReadInt64	Reads an 8-byte signed integer from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 8 bytes.
ReadSByte	Reads a signed byte from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 1 byte.
ReadSingle	Reads a 4-byte floating-point value from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 4 bytes.
ReadString	Reads a string from the current stream and advances the reader’s position past it. The string begins with its length.
ReadUInt16	Reads a 2-byte unsigned integer from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 2 bytes.
ReadUInt32	Reads a 4-byte unsigned integer from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 4 bytes.
ReadUInt64	Reads an 8-byte unsigned integer from the stream and advances the reader’s position by 8 bytes.

The following table describes the BinaryWriter class’s most useful methods.

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Name	Description
Close	Closes the BinaryWriter and its underlying stream.
Flush	Writes any buffered data into the underlying stream.
Seek	Sets the position within the stream.
Write	Writes a value into the stream. This method has many overloaded versions that write characters, arrays of characters, integers, strings, unsigned 64-bit integers, and so on.