Question

If I read and wrote a binary file using StreamReader and StreamWriter, can the file be repaired?

// Original Code - Corrupted the Destination File
using (Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
{
    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(responseStream))
    {
        using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(destinationFileName, false))
        {
            writer.Write(reader.ReadToEnd());
        }
    }
}


// New Code - Destination File is Good
using (Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
{
    using (FileStream fs = File.Create(destinationFileName))
    {
        responseStream.CopyTo(fs);
    } 
}

Answer 1

If I read and wrote a binary file using StreamReader and StreamWriter, can the file be repaired?

It depends what’s in the file. If it’s actually text in the right encoding, then you won’t have lost anything.

If it’s genuinely binary data (e.g. a JPEG) then you’ll almost certainly have lost information, irreparably. Just don’t do it, and if you’ve already done it, I probably wouldn’t try to “fix” the files – I’d write them off as “bad”.

If you’d used ISO-8859-1, it’s possible that all would have been well – although it would still have been bad code which would be better off changed.