Question

I check to see if a file exists with

if(!File.Exists(myPath))
{
    File.Create(myPath);
}

However, when I go to create a StreamReader with this newly created file, I get an error saying that

The process cannot access the file ‘[my file path here]’ because it is being used by another process.

There isn’t a File.Close(myPath) that I can call so that it is closed after being created, so how do I free this resource so that I can open it later in my program?

Answer 1

File.Create(string) returns an instance of the FileStream class. You can call the Stream.Close() method on this object in order to close it and release resources that it’s using:

var myFile = File.Create(myPath);
myFile.Close();

However, since FileStream implements IDisposable, you can take advantage of the using statement (generally the preferred way of handling a situation like this). This will ensure that the stream is closed and disposed of properly when you’re done with it:

using (var myFile = File.Create(myPath))
{
   // interact with myFile here, it will be disposed automatically
}