Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers: Deitel Developer Series, Second Edition

18.3. Files and Streams

Visual Basic views a file as a sequential stream of bytes (Fig. 18.2). Depending on the operating system, each file ends either with an end-of-file marker or at a specific byte number that is recorded in a system-maintained administrative data structure. For example, the Windows keeps track of the number of bytes in a file. When you open a file from a Visual Basic program, an object is created and a stream is associated with the object. When a program executes, the runtime environment creates three stream objects that are accessible via properties Console.Out, Console.In and Console.Error, respectively. These objects facilitate communication between a program and a particular file or device. Console.In refers to the