StreamReader, ReadToEnd

Sometimes we want to read in a file line-by-line, but other times we just want the entire file at once. The ReadToEnd method on StreamReader is helpful here.

With this method, we consume the entire file into a string in one line. This is similar in operation to File.ReadAllText. But StreamReader requires some surrounding code.

An example

Here is the ReadToEnd method. We can call it inside a using-statement for best effect. Please change the file path before you run this program on your system.

using System;
using System.IO;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(@"C:\programs\file.txt"))
        {
            // Read entire text file with ReadToEnd.
            string contents = reader.ReadToEnd();
            Console.WriteLine(contents);
        }
    }
}
Thank you
Friend

A review

Which methods are best? If you already have a StreamReader, then using ReadToEnd is probably the best solution to read an entire text file into a string.

ReadToEndAsync

With ReadToEndAsync on StreamReader, we can achieve a significant performance boost. But this only helps when a lot of CPU usage is present during processing.

A summary

ReadToEnd is important enough that it deserves special attention. I have used it recently in a program—sometimes it leads to clearer code than ReadLine and while-loops would.