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C# - Read data from a file character by character

Learn, how to read data from file character by character till the end of the file in C#? By Nidhi Last updated : April 03, 2023

Problem Statement

Here, we will open an already existing file and then read the content of the file character by character till the end of the file and print data on the console screen.

C# program to read data from file character by character till the end of the file

The source code to read data from file character by character until the end of the file is given below. The given program is compiled and executed successfully on Microsoft Visual Studio.

//C# program to read data from file 
//character by character till the end of the file.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;

class Demo
{
    static void Main()
    {
        Stream s = new FileStream(@"d:\data.txt", FileMode.Open);
        int val = 0;
        char ch;

        while (true)
        {
            val = s.ReadByte();

            if (val < 0)
                break;
            ch = (char)val;
            Console.Write(ch);
        }
        Console.WriteLine();
    }
}

Output

This is a bag.
This is a bat.
This is a ball.
Press any key to continue . . .

Explanation

Here, we created a class Demo that contains the Main() method. The Main() method is the entry point of the program, here we opened an already existing file (d:\data.txt) and then read the content of the file using ReadByte() method character by character till the end of the file, but ReadByte() method returns integer value then we need to typecast it into character type, and print data on the console screen.

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