Streams and Byte Streams in C#


A file is a collection of data stored in a disk with a specific name and a directory path. When a file is opened for reading or writing, it becomes a stream.

The type of streams includes −

  • Byte Streams − It includes Stream, FileStream, MemoryStream and BufferedStream.

  • Character Streams − It includes Textreader-TextWriter, StreamReader, StraemWriter and other streams.

Byte streams have classes that consider data in the stream as byte.

Stream class is the base for other byte stream classes. The following are the properties −

  • CanRead − Whether stream supports reading

  • CanWrite − Whether stream supports writing

  • Length − Length of the stream

The System.IO namespace has various classes that are used for performing numerous operations with files, such as creating and deleting files, reading from or writing to a file, closing a file etc.

The streams we discussed are described in the below table −

Sr.NoI/O Class & Description
1BinaryReader
Reads primitive data from a binary stream.
2BinaryWriter
Writes primitive data in binary format.
3BufferedStream
A temporary storage for a stream of bytes.
4Directory
Helps in manipulating a directory structure.
5DirectoryInfo
Used for performing operations on directories.
6DriveInfo
Provides information for the drives.
7File
Helps in manipulating files.
8FileInfo
Used for performing operations on files.
9FileStream
Used to read from and write to any location in a file.
10MemoryStream
Used for random access to streamed data stored in memory.
11Path
Performs operations on path information.
12StreamReader
Used for reading characters from a byte stream.
13StreamWriter
Is used for writing characters to a stream.
14StringReader
Is used for reading from a string buffer.
15StringWriter
Is used for writing into a string buffer.

Updated on: 21-Jun-2020

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