Working with files and directories

The System.IO namespace contains two classes for working with directories (Directory and DirectoryInfo), and two for working with files (File and FileInfo). Directory and File are static classes but contain mostly the same functionality provided by the instance classes—DirectoryInfo and FileInfo.

The latter two are derived from the FileSystemInfo base abstract class, which provides members that are common for manipulating both files and directories. The most important of these members are the properties listed in the following table:

The most important members of the DirectoryInfo class, excluding the ones inherited from the base class, which were listed in the preceding table, are as follows:

Similarly, the most important members of the FileInfo class, excluding the ones inherited from the base class, are as follows:

Now that we have...