How To: Reading and Writing Text Files

Writing to a Text File

Listing 1: Writing Text Data to a File: TextFileWriter.cs


using System;
using System.IO;

namespace csharp_station.howto
{
class TextFileWriter
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// create a writer and open the file
TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter("date.txt");

// write a line of text to the file
tw.WriteLine(DateTime.Now);

// close the stream
tw.Close();
}
}
}


Reading From a Text File

Listing 2 shows how to read from a text file:

Listing 2: Reading Text Data from a File: TextFileReader.cs


using System;
using System.IO;

namespace csharp_station.howto
{
class TextFileReader
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// create reader & open file
Textreader tr = new StreamReader("date.txt");

// read a line of text
Console.WriteLine(tr.ReadLine());

// close the stream
tr.Close();
}
}
}