Question

I’ve got a code which populates a stream. After population, the stream’s length 1000 (for instance), while the returned string length from Stream.ReadString is 997 and the returned value from StreamReader.ReadToEnd() is an empty stream.

Here’s a code showing what I mean (obviously, this isn’t exactly my working code, but the issue is the same):

MemoryStream stream = MethodCreatingPopulatedStream(stream);
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream);

if (stream.Length != reader.ReadToEnd().Length)
{
    PostQuestionInStackOverFlow();
}
else if (!string.Equals(reader.ReadToEnd(), stream.ReadString()))
{
    PostQuestionInStackOverFlow();
    GetAnnoyedAtDotNet();
}
else
{
    Smile();
}

What am I missing here?

P.S, Adding Stream.Flush anywhere made no change

Answer 1

The length of the string (characters) is not necessarily the same length as the stream (bytes). It depends entirely on the encoding and any other overhead associated with storing a string (such as storing its length).

As for your second test, stream.ReadString() doesn’t even exist and would have to assume a certain encoding if it did.