Question

I have to write 300+ files to a server share on a hourly basis. A quick implementation using CreateText takes approximately 1.4 seconds per file. I know there is a better way to do this, but I am unsure which way is actually the quickest/most efficient; hence my question:

Which text writing class is the most efficient for writing hundreds of small files ( 336 bytes on average ) to a server share?

Answer 1

I would recommend File.WriteAllText Method.Lesson is, let C# do it in its own way because implementers must have cared about the performance.

I tried benchmarking two functions with following code(Please feel free to suggest if you have better code):-

class Program
    {       
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            const int _max = 1000000;
            string data = "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA";
            string path="First\\" + "txt";
            string path2 = "Second\\" + "txt";
            var s1 = Stopwatch.StartNew();
            for (int i = 0; i < 336; i++)
            {
                File.WriteAllText(path+i, data);
            }
            s1.Stop();

            var s2 = Stopwatch.StartNew();
            for (int i = 0; i < 336; i++)
            {
                using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(path2+i))
                {                   
                        sw.WriteLine(data);                    
                }
            }
            s2.Stop();

            Console.WriteLine("Loop1 {0}\n",((double)(s1.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds * 1000000) / _max).ToString("0.00 ns"));
            Console.WriteLine("Loop2 {0}\n", ((double)(s2.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds * 1000000) / _max).ToString("0.00 ns"));
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }

---

And I got following output:-

For a file count of 3360 output was:-

Loop1 16880.90 

Loop2 17285.55