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Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData));

lbx.Items.Add("Common Application:\t" +

Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData));

lbx.Items.Add("Local Application Data:\t" +

Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData));

Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Cookies));

}

When I executed the program with the above changes on my system, I got the following result:

Manipulating Files using System.IO.File and System.IO.FileInfo classes

We can manipulate files and perform different operations on them using the System.IO.File and System.IO.FileInfo classes. The System.IO.File class exposes static methods to perform various operations on files.

On the other hand, the object of type System.IO.FileInfo class represents a single file through which we can get/set different properties of a file. Let us practice them one by one:

System.IO.File class

A review of static methods of the File class is presented in the following table:

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Copying and Moving a file using Copy() and Move() methods

Now if we want to copy this file to C:\my programs folder, we can use the following statement:

File.Copy("C:\\c-sharp.txt", "c:\\my programs\\c-sharp.txt");

Similarly you can use the Move() method to move a file. Also you can use the overloaded form of the Copy() and Create() methods that take a Boolean value to indicate whether you wish to overwrite this file if the file with the same name exists in the target path. E.g.,

File.Copy("C:\\c-sharp.txt", "c:\\my programs\\c-sharp.txt", true);

Checking the existence of the file using Exists() method

This method can be used to check the existence of the file

if(!File.Exists("C:\\c-sharp.txt"))

{

File.Create("C:\\c-sharp.txt");

}

Getting Attributes of a file using GetAttributes() method

We can check the attributes of a file using the GetAttributes() method

FileAttributes attrs = File.GetAttributes("c:\\c-sharp.txt");

lbx.Items.Add("File 'c:\\c-sharp.txt'");

lbx.Items.Add(attrs.ToString());

When I executed the program, I got the information that this is an archive file. Similarly you can set the attributes of the file by using the FileAttributes enumeration

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System.IO.FileInfo class

The System.IO.FileInfo class is also used to perform different operations on files. Unlike the File class, we need to create an object of the FileInfo class to use its services. A review of some more important methods and properties of the FileInfo class is presented in the following table:

A quick and simple example

Although almost all the above properties and methods are understandable just by reading their name; we still need to create a simple example to demonstrate the functionality of the FileInfo class. In the following example, we will simply perform different operations on a file and display the result in a list box named ‘lbx’

Author’s Friendly Note: I think I have made the worst use of my time in learning programming languages when I read something, thought that ‘It is so easy, I have understood it to 100% and I don’t need to implement a program for this’. Remember most humans just can’t learn even Console.WriteLine() without actually writing it in the IDE, compiling and executing the program.

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