Closing a file after File.Create

c# file-io
John picture John · Mar 1, 2011 · Viewed 173.2k times · Source

I check to see if a file exists with 

if(!File.Exists(myPath))
{
    File.Create(myPath);
}

However, when I go to create a StreamReader with this newly created file, I get an error saying that

The process cannot access the file '[my file path here]' because it is being used by another process.

There isn't a File.Close(myPath) that I can call so that it is closed after being created, so how do I free this resource so that I can open it later in my program?

Answer

Donut picture Donut · Mar 1, 2011

File.Create(string) returns an instance of the FileStream class. You can call the Stream.Close() method on this object in order to close it and release resources that it's using: 

var myFile = File.Create(myPath);
myFile.Close();

However, since FileStream implements IDisposable, you can take advantage of the using statement (generally the preferred way of handling a situation like this). This will ensure that the stream is closed and disposed of properly when you're done with it:

using (var myFile = File.Create(myPath))
{
   // interact with myFile here, it will be disposed automatically
}

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