File.OpenWrite(String) Method

Definition

Opens an existing file or creates a new file for writing.

C#
public static System.IO.FileStream OpenWrite(string path);

Parameters

path
String

The file to be opened for writing.

Returns

An unshared FileStream object on the specified path with Write access.

Exceptions

The caller does not have the required permission.

-or-

path specified a read-only file or directory.

.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, it is on an unmapped drive).

path is in an invalid format.

Examples

The following example opens a file for reading and writing.

C#
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;

class Test
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        string path = @"c:\temp\MyTest.txt";

        // Open the stream and write to it.
        using (FileStream fs = File.OpenWrite(path))
        {
            Byte[] info =
                new UTF8Encoding(true).GetBytes("This is to test the OpenWrite method.");

            // Add some information to the file.
            fs.Write(info, 0, info.Length);
        }

        // Open the stream and read it back.
        using (FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(path))
        {
            byte[] b = new byte[1024];
            UTF8Encoding temp = new UTF8Encoding(true);

            while (fs.Read(b,0,b.Length) > 0)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(temp.GetString(b));
            }
        }
    }
}

Remarks

This method is equivalent to the FileStream(String, FileMode, FileAccess, FileShare) constructor overload with file mode set to OpenOrCreate, the access set to Write, and the share mode set to None.

The OpenWrite method opens a file if one already exists for the file path, or creates a new file if one does not exist. For an existing file, it does not append the new text to the existing text. Instead, it overwrites the existing characters with the new characters. If you overwrite a longer string (such as "This is a test of the OpenWrite method") with a shorter string (such as "Second run"), the file will contain a mix of the strings ("Second runtest of the OpenWrite method").

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

The returned FileStream does not support reading. To open a file for both reading and writing, use Open.

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