Read FileStream

Question

Hello all

I have a function which has an input Stream, if it's MemoryStream, I can get its text content by:

Encoding.ASCII.GetString(InputStream.ToArray)

But, if it is FileStream, how to get the whole file contents as text string?

This is what I found but why write it to byte()?

InputStream.Read(Byte(), 0, Convert.ToInt32(InputStream.Length))

Any short efficient way to go? :)

Answer 1

You can just use StreamReader and specify the encoding you of the data (ASCII here as per your example):

await PrintStream(new MemoryStream(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("Hello world!")));
await PrintStream(new FileStream("./test.txt", FileMode.Open));

await Console.Out.WriteLineAsync();

async Task PrintStream(Stream stream) {
	var reader = new StreamReader(stream, Encoding.ASCII);

	Console.WriteLine(await reader.ReadToEndAsync());
}

Disclaimer: If the data isn't too big this method is fine, but if you're dealing with huge files (like a binary image file) then you should prefer the Read option so you can read the data in chunks to avoid dragging too much into memory at one time.