How to write super-fast file-streaming code in C#?

Question

I have to split a huge file into many smaller files. Each of the destination files is defined by an offset and length as the number of bytes. I'm using the following code:

private void copy(string srcFile, string dstFile, int offset, int length)
{
    BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(File.OpenRead(srcFile));
    reader.BaseStream.Seek(offset, SeekOrigin.Begin);
    byte[] buffer = reader.ReadBytes(length);

    BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(File.OpenWrite(dstFile));
    writer.Write(buffer);
}

Considering that I have to call this function about 100,000 times, it is remarkably slow.

2. Is there a way to make the Writer connected directly to the Reader? (That is, without actually loading the contents into the Buffer in memory.)

Answer 1

I don't believe there's anything within .NET to allow copying a section of a file without buffering it in memory. However, it strikes me that this is inefficient anyway, as it needs to open the input file and seek many times. If you're just splitting up the file, why not open the input file once, and then just write something like:

public static void CopySection(Stream input, string targetFile, int length)
{
    byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];

    using (Stream output = File.OpenWrite(targetFile))
    {
        int bytesRead = 1;
        // This will finish silently if we couldn't read "length" bytes.
        // An alternative would be to throw an exception
        while (length > 0 && bytesRead > 0)
        {
            bytesRead = input.Read(buffer, 0, Math.Min(length, buffer.Length));
            output.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            length -= bytesRead;
        }
    }
}

This has a minor inefficiency in creating a buffer on each invocation - you might want to create the buffer once and pass that into the method as well:

public static void CopySection(Stream input, string targetFile,
                               int length, byte[] buffer)
{
    using (Stream output = File.OpenWrite(targetFile))
    {
        int bytesRead = 1;
        // This will finish silently if we couldn't read "length" bytes.
        // An alternative would be to throw an exception
        while (length > 0 && bytesRead > 0)
        {
            bytesRead = input.Read(buffer, 0, Math.Min(length, buffer.Length));
            output.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            length -= bytesRead;
        }
    }
}

Note that this also closes the output stream (due to the using statement) which your original code didn't.

The important point is that this will use the operating system file buffering more efficiently, because you reuse the same input stream, instead of reopening the file at the beginning and then seeking.

I think it'll be significantly faster, but obviously you'll need to try it to see...

This assumes contiguous chunks, of course. If you need to skip bits of the file, you can do that from outside the method. Also, if you're writing very small files, you may want to optimise for that situation too - the easiest way to do that would probably be to introduce a BufferedStream wrapping the input stream.