Question

i am trying to learn C# so, i watch tutorials and follow them step by step, but i also like to add some small things to the programs they do in tutorials. this time i was watching thenewboston C# tutorial about file streaming, i want to create a text reading program which could both read byte-s and normal texts, so i created 3 buttons, 2 for choosing how the reader should show the text and 1 for opening file dialog, but something is wrong with byte reader when i choose that option it only show’s zeros.

this is how my program looks like

this is how my text file looks like

this is how my result looks like when choosing byte option

this is my code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Media;
using System.IO;

namespace sound
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
    bool bytebuttonclicked = false;
    bool normalbuttonclicked = false;
    string text1;
    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }
    SoundPlayer My_JukeBox = new SoundPlayer(@"C:\WINDOWS\Media\tada.wav");

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        OpenFileDialog OFD = new OpenFileDialog();

        if (OFD.ShowDialog() == System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK)
        {
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(File.OpenRead(OFD.FileName));
            if (normalbuttonclicked == true && bytebuttonclicked == false)
            {
                textBox1.Text = sr.ReadToEnd();
                sr.Dispose();
            }
            else if (bytebuttonclicked == true && normalbuttonclicked == false)
            {
                text1 = sr.ReadToEnd();
                byte[] Buffer = new byte[text1.Length];
                sr.BaseStream.Read(Buffer, 0, text1.Length);
                foreach (byte MyByte in Buffer)
                    textBox1.Text += MyByte.ToString("X") + " ";
                sr.Dispose();
            }
            else
            {
                MessageBox.Show("choose one button");
            }
        }
        My_JukeBox.Play();
    }

    private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        bytebuttonclicked = true;
        button1.Enabled = true;
    }

    private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        normalbuttonclicked = true;
        button1.Enabled = true;
    }
}
}

So i don’t understand why the program shows me zeros, what’s wrong with my program and how can i improve it?
thank you.

Answer 1

First ReadToEnd call reaches to the end of stream, so next sr.BaseStream.Read call tries to read ahead of end of the file hence all zeros. You can either:

• Convert already read text1 to bytes instead of re-reading if you don’t care about the data loss during encoding.

or

• Reset the position of the stream (not reader) by setting stream’s (result of File.OpenRead operation) Position property.

or

• Re-open the stream.