For everyone saying to get the bytes, copy it to MemoryStream, etc. - if the content isn't expected to be larger than computer's memory should be reasonably be expected to allow, why not just use StreamReader's built in ReadLine() or ReadToEnd()? I saw these weren't even mentioned, and they do everything for you.
I had a use-case where I just wanted to store the path of a SQLite file from a FileDialogResult that the user picks during the synching/initialization process. My program then later needs to use this path when it is run for normal application processes. Maybe not the ideal way to capture/re-use the information, but it's not much different than writing to/reading from an .ini file - I just didn't want to set one up for one value. So I just read it from a flat, one-line text file. Here's what I did:
string filePath = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
if (!filePath.EndsWith(@"\")) temppath += @"\"; // ensures we have a slash on the end
filePath = filePath.Replace(@"\\", @"\"); // Visual Studio escapes slashes by putting double-slashes in their results - this ensures we don't have double-slashes
filePath += "SQLite.txt";
string path = String.Empty;
FileStream fs = new FileStream(filePath, FileMode.Open);
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(fs);
path = sr.ReadLine(); // can also use sr.ReadToEnd();
sr.Close();
fs.Close();
fs.Flush();
return path;
If you REALLY need a byte[] instead of a string for some reason, using my example, you can always do:
byte[] toBytes;
FileStream fs = new FileStream(filePath, FileMode.Open);
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(fs);
toBytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(path);
sr.Close();
fs.Close();
fs.Flush();
return toBytes;
(Returning toBytes instead of path.)
If you don't want ASCII you can easily replace that with UTF8, Unicode, etc.