Notice: This page requires JavaScript to function properly.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings or update your browser.
Reading Files using StreamReader | Additional Structures & File Handling
C# Beyond Basics
course content

Contenido del Curso

C# Beyond Basics

C# Beyond Basics

1. Additional Structures & File Handling
2. Structs & Enumerators
3. Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
4. OOP Essentials
5. OOP Principles

book
Reading Files using StreamReader

We can open and read files using the C# programming language.

For reading a file, we create a new StreamReader object. The StreamReader object takes in the path of the file.

cs

index

copy
1
StreamReader fileVarName = new StreamReader(fullPath);

Here fileVarName represents the variable name in which we will store the StreamReader object, and fullPath is supposed to be the full path of the file in the form of a string.

For-example we want to open a file "text.txt" on Desktop which has the path C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/text.txt:

cs

index

copy
1
StreamReader textFile = new StreamReader("C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/text.txt");

Consider the text.txt file has the following content:

txt

text

copy
12345
This is some example text

A StreamReader object has a ReadLine method which reads one line from the file and returns it:

cs

index

copy
1234
var textFile = new StreamReader("C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/text.txt"); string line = textFile.ReadLine(); Console.WriteLine(line);

Output:

The ReadLine method automatically switches the cursor to the next line so when it's called again, it reads the next line if there is any, otherwise it simply returns null (nothing):

cs

index

copy
12345678
var textFile = new StreamReader("C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/text.txt"); Console.WriteLine(textFile.ReadLine()); // This Console.WriteLine(textFile.ReadLine()); // is Console.WriteLine(textFile.ReadLine()); // some Console.WriteLine(textFile.ReadLine()); // example Console.WriteLine(textFile.ReadLine()); // text Console.WriteLine(textFile.ReadLine()); // NULL

Output:

For reading all the lines from a file we can use the while loop with a condition which checks if the next line is null or not. Following is a simple way we can do that:

cs

index

copy
12345678
var textFile = new StreamReader("C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/text.txt"); string line = textFile.ReadLine(); while(line != null) { Console.WriteLine(line); line = textFile.ReadLine(); }

Output:

We can make the above code a bit neater using a trick, for that lets take a look at the assignment statements. An assignment statement has a return value as well, which is the value that is being assigned. It can be understood with an example:

cs

index

copy
12
int a; Console.WriteLine(a = 7);

Output:

It outputs 7 because the statement a = 7 returns 7 which is the value being assigned to a.

We can use this information to do some creative things like assigning the same value to multiple variables in a single statement:

cs

index

copy
123456789
int a = 1; int b = 1; int c = 1; a = b = c = 9; Console.WriteLine(a); Console.WriteLine(b); Console.WriteLine(c);

Output:

Using this information, we can modify the file reading code to make it shorter removing unnecessary code:

cs

index

copy
1234567
var textFile = new StreamReader("C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/text.txt"); string line; while((line = textFile.ReadLine()) != null) { Console.WriteLine(line); }

Inside the condition we first used an assignment statement line = textFile.ReadLine() which automatically updates the line variable and then checks if it's null from the statement's return value.

After reading the file we must also close it using the Close method, otherwise it can potentially cause memory leaks or the file can be locked and become inaccessible from other places as long as the program is running.

The final code will look something like this:

cs

index

copy
123456789
var textFile = new StreamReader("C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/text.txt"); string line; while ((line = textFile.ReadLine()) != null) { Console.WriteLine(line); } textFile.Close();
question-icon

=();

Click or drag`n`drop items and fill in the blanks

¿Todo estuvo claro?

¿Cómo podemos mejorarlo?

¡Gracias por tus comentarios!

Sección 1. Capítulo 6
We're sorry to hear that something went wrong. What happened?
some-alt