difference between memory stream and filestream

Question

During the serialization we can use either memory stream or file stream.

What is the basic difference between these two? What does memory stream mean?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

namespace Serilization
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            MemoryStream aStream = new MemoryStream();
            BinaryFormatter aBinaryFormat = new BinaryFormatter();
            aBinaryFormat.Serialize(aStream, person);
            aStream.Close();
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Stream is a representation of bytes. Both these classes derive from the Stream class which is abstract by definition.

As the name suggests, a FileStream reads and writes to a file whereas a MemoryStream reads and writes to the memory. So it relates to where the stream is stored.

Now it depends how you plan to use both of these. For eg: Let us assume you want to read binary data from the database, you would go in for a MemoryStream. However if you want to read a file on your system, you would go in for a FileStream.

One quick advantage of a MemoryStream is that there is not need to create temporary buffers and files in an application.