Accessing files in c#

[FerrisUML]

Im writing a small web application and what I'd like to do is open a
file, read the contents into memory and then close the file as fast as
I can to free up the file for the next user. Once the file is loaded
into memory and subsequently closed, i would use the contents of the
file (now loaded into memory) to perform some quick processing. Any
idea how best to do this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[=?Utf-8?B?TW9ydGVuIFdlbm5ldmlrIFtDIyBNVlBd?=]

Hi FerrisUML,

Opening, closing files are done using System.IO.File. Storing the content
in memory can be done in any number of ways, like string, byte[] or
MemoryStream.

As for doing this in web applications you need to be aware of restrictions
for accessing the file system, which by default is limited to the web
application root folder and its subfolders.

If you need to access other folders, either open up for this folder/file by
adding read/write permissions to aspnet, or change the account used to run
the web application to something that has access to the file

--
Happy Coding!
Morten Wennevik [C# MVP]
"FerrisUML" wrote:

Im writing a small web application and what I'd like to do is open a
file, read the contents into memory and then close the file as fast as
I can to free up the file for the next user. Once the file is loaded
into memory and subsequently closed, i would use the contents of the
file (now loaded into memory) to perform some quick processing. Any
idea how best to do this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Peter Duniho]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:30:24 -0700, Jon Skeet [C# MVP] <sk***@pobox.com>
wrote:

I'd go beyond that - I'd keep reading regardless of the file's original
length:

http://pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/readbinary.html

I don't know about that. The OP suggested he wants to read the file as
fast as possible. To me, this means not performing any allocations or
other "optional" work while the file is actually open. Making the code
flexible enough to deal with an indetermine file length means introducing
potential overhead.

There is also the implication, though he doesn't state it explicitly, that
the files have been completely written as of the moment he wants to
process them. So coding that flexibility might not be needed in any case.

Pete

[Peter Duniho]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:03:04 -0700, Michael D. Ober
<obermd.@.alum.mit.edu.nospam.wrote:

Using a filestream has another advantage, you can open it
readonly/share-read so that other processes can also open it the same
way, making the locking issue completely go away.

Agreed. I took it as implied that for some reason the OP needed sole
access to the file at the moment he's reading/processing it. But yes, if
you can change the original problem definition, there are better ways to
deal with this than reading the whole file into memory all at once.

Pete