Working With Files

We will learn about the following useful classes to work with files:

• File

• FileInfo

• Directory

• DirectoryInfo

• Path

Note: All these classes live under the System.IO namespace.

File and FileInfo

File and FileInfo give you methods to create, copy, delete, move, and open files.

The only difference is that FileInfo provides instance methods, while File provides static methods.

Pro tip: File's static methods require some security checks to run every time you use them. Whereas FileInfo only needs to run security once when you create the instance. So, if you are performing many manipulations, it's more performant to use FileInfo.

Directory and DirectoryInfo

Just like File and FileInfo except they allow you to manipulate directories.

Path

Provides methods to work with strings that contain file/directory path information. (It basically is a bunch of string methods that you don't have to create yourself.)

var path = @"c:\Downloads\somefile.txt";
Path.GetExtension(path);
Path.GetFileName(path);
Path.GetDirectoryName(path);