ReadAllLines for a Stream object?

c# file text stream
Ryan Peschel picture Ryan Peschel · Nov 9, 2012 · Viewed 62.4k times · Source

There exists a File.ReadAllLines but not a Stream.ReadAllLines.

using (Stream stream = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream("Test_Resources.Resources.Accounts.txt"))
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
    // Would prefer string[] result = reader.ReadAllLines();
    string result = reader.ReadToEnd();
}

Does there exist a way to do this or do I have to manually loop through the file line by line?

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Nov 9, 2012

You can write a method which reads line by line, like this:

public IEnumerable<string> ReadLines(Func<Stream> streamProvider,
                                     Encoding encoding)
{
    using (var stream = streamProvider())
    using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream, encoding))
    {
        string line;
        while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
        {
            yield return line;
        }
    }
}

Then call it as:

var lines = ReadLines(() => Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
                                    .GetManifestResourceStream(resourceName),
                      Encoding.UTF8)
                .ToList();

The Func<> part is to cope when reading more than once, and to avoid leaving streams open unnecessarily. You could easily wrap that code up in a method, of course.

If you don't need it all in memory at once, you don't even need the ToList...

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