FileStream.Read Method

This method overrides Read.

The offset parameter gives the offset of the byte in array (the buffer index) at which to begin reading, and the count parameter gives the maximum number of bytes to be read from this stream. The returned value is the actual number of bytes read, or zero if the end of the stream is reached. If the read operation is successful, the current position of the stream is advanced by the number of bytes read. If an exception occurs, the current position of the stream is unchanged.

The Read method returns zero only after reaching the end of the stream. Otherwise, Read always reads at least one byte from the stream before returning. If no data is available from the stream upon a call to Read, the method will block until at least one byte of data can be returned. An implementation is free to return fewer bytes than requested even if the end of the stream has not been reached.

Use BinaryReader for reading primitive data types.

Interrupting a thread that is performing a read operation is not supported. Although the operations may appear to be successful after the thread is unblocked, these actions can decrease your application's performance and reliability.

For a list of common I/O tasks, see Common I/O Tasks.

The following example reads the contents from a FileStream and writes it into another FileStream.

using System;
using System.IO;

class Test
{

public static void Main()
{
    // Specify a file to read from and to create.
    string pathSource = @"c:\tests\source.txt";
    string pathNew = @"c:\tests\newfile.txt";

    try
    {

        using (FileStream fsSource = new FileStream(pathSource,
            FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
        {

            // Read the source file into a byte array.
            byte[] bytes = new byte[fsSource.Length];
            int numBytesToRead = (int)fsSource.Length;
            int numBytesRead = 0;
            while (numBytesToRead > 0)
            {
                // Read may return anything from 0 to numBytesToRead.
                int n = fsSource.Read(bytes, numBytesRead, numBytesToRead);

                // Break when the end of the file is reached.
                if (n == 0)
                    break;

                numBytesRead += n;
                numBytesToRead -= n;
            }
             numBytesToRead = bytes.Length;

            // Write the byte array to the other FileStream.
            using (FileStream fsNew = new FileStream(pathNew,
                FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write))
            {
                fsNew.Write(bytes, 0, numBytesToRead);
            }
        }
    }
    catch (FileNotFoundException ioEx)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(ioEx.Message);
    }
}
}

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows XP SP3, Windows XP SP2 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core supported with SP1 or later), Windows Server 2003 SP2

Reference

Other Resources