File.AppendText(String) Method

Definition

Creates a StreamWriter that appends UTF-8 encoded text to an existing file, or to a new file if the specified file does not exist.

C#
public static System.IO.StreamWriter AppendText(string path);

Parameters

path
String

The path to the file to append to.

Returns

A stream writer that appends UTF-8 encoded text to the specified file or to a new file.

Exceptions

The caller does not have the required permission.

.NET Framework and .NET Core versions older than 2.1: path is a zero-length string, contains only white space, or contains one or more invalid characters. You can query for invalid characters by using the GetInvalidPathChars() method.

path is null.

The specified path, file name, or both exceed the system-defined maximum length.

The specified path is invalid (for example, the directory doesn't exist or it is on an unmapped drive).

path is in an invalid format.

Examples

The following example appends text to a file. The method creates a new file if the file doesn't exist. However, the directory named temp on drive C must exist for the example to complete successfully.

C#
using System;
using System.IO;

class Test
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        string path = @"c:\temp\MyTest.txt";
        // This text is added only once to the file.
        if (!File.Exists(path))
        {
            // Create a file to write to.
            using (StreamWriter sw = File.CreateText(path))
            {
                sw.WriteLine("Hello");
                sw.WriteLine("And");
                sw.WriteLine("Welcome");
            }	
        }

        // This text is always added, making the file longer over time
        // if it is not deleted.
        using (StreamWriter sw = File.AppendText(path))
        {
            sw.WriteLine("This");
            sw.WriteLine("is Extra");
            sw.WriteLine("Text");
        }	

        // Open the file to read from.
        using (StreamReader sr = File.OpenText(path))
        {
            string s = "";
            while ((s = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(s);
            }
        }
    }
}

Remarks

This method is equivalent to the StreamWriter(String, Boolean) constructor overload. If the file specified by path does not exist, it is created. If the file does exist, write operations to the StreamWriter append text to the file. Additional threads are permitted to read the file while it is open.

The path parameter is permitted to specify relative or absolute path information. Relative path information is interpreted as relative to the current working directory. To obtain the current working directory, see GetCurrentDirectory.

The path parameter is not case-sensitive.

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

Applies to

Product Versions
.NET Core 1.0, Core 1.1, Core 2.0, Core 2.1, Core 2.2, Core 3.0, Core 3.1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
.NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2, 4.8, 4.8.1
.NET Standard 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1
UWP 10.0

See also