Common I/O Tasks

Article
02/04/2013

The System.IO namespace provides several classes that allow for various actions, such as reading and writing, to be performed on files, directories, and streams. For more information, see File and Stream I/O.

Common File Tasks

To do this...	See the example in this topic...
Create a text file.	System.IO.File
Write to a text file.	How to: Write Text to a File
Read from a text file.	How to: Read Text from a File
Append text to a file.	How to: Open and Append to a Log File File.AppendText FileInfo.AppendText
Rename or move a file.	File.Move FileInfo.MoveTo
Delete a file.	File.Delete FileInfo.Delete
Copy a file.	File.Copy FileInfo.CopyTo
Get the size of a file.	FileInfo.Length
Get the attributes of a file.	File.GetAttributes
Set the attributes of a file.	File.SetAttributes
Determine whether a file exists.	File.Exists
Read from a binary file.	How to: Read and Write to a Newly Created Data File
Write to a binary file.	How to: Read and Write to a Newly Created Data File
Retrieve a file extension.	Path.GetExtension
Retrieve the fully qualified path of a file.	Path.GetFullPath
Retrieve the file name and extension from a path.	Path.GetFileName
Change the extension of a file.	Path.ChangeExtension

Common Directory Tasks

To do this...	See the example in this topic...
Rename or move a directory.	Directory.Move DirectoryInfo.MoveTo
Copy a Directory	How to: Copy Directories
Delete a directory.	Directory.Delete DirectoryInfo.Delete
Create a directory.	Directory.CreateDirectory FileInfo.Directory
Create a subdirectory.	DirectoryInfo.CreateSubdirectory
See the files in a directory.	FileInfo.Name
See the subdirectories of a directory.	Directory.GetDirectories DirectoryInfo.GetDirectories
See all the files in all subdirectories of a directory.	DirectoryInfo.GetFileSystemInfos
Find the size of a directory.	System.IO.Directory
Determine whether a directory exists.	Directory.Exists

See Also

Concepts

Composing Streams

Asynchronous File I/O

Other Resources

File and Stream I/O