Sams Teach Yourself Visual Studio® .NET 2003 in 21 Days

Working with Files and Directories

The System.IO namespace contains the basic file I/O functions that enable you to read and write files, list directories, get file information, and manipulate files and directories. Most applications interact with a file in one way or another, and the System.IO namespace helps you do so.

In this section, you learn how to

• List directories and files

• Read and write simple text files

Note

In JScript, VBScript, and Visual Basic, you use the FileSystemObject to work with files and directories. You can use the FileSystemObject in .NET, but because it's a COM object, there's additional resource overhead when calling the FileSystemObject's properties and methods. For this reason, you should always use the managed System.IO ...