readtoend

ReadToEnd is a method in the .NET framework, defined on the StreamReader class and inherited from TextReader. It reads all remaining characters from the current position in the stream to its end and returns them as a string.

The method advances the reader to the end of the stream and returns the collected content. If the end of the stream has already been reached, it returns an empty string. It can throw ObjectDisposedException if the reader has been disposed, or IOException for I/O errors; creating the resulting string may also throw OutOfMemoryException if the content is very large.

Usage is common when the full contents of a file or stream are needed in memory. A typical pattern is:

using (var reader = new StreamReader("path/to/file.txt"))

{

string content = reader.ReadToEnd();

}

There is also an asynchronous variant, ReadToEndAsync, which returns a Task<string> and is suitable for non-blocking contexts.

Considerations and alternatives: ReadToEnd loads the entire remaining content into memory, which can be problematic for very large files or constrained environments. For large data or streaming scenarios, reading in chunks with Read or ReadAsync, or processing line by line with ReadLine, may be preferable. ReadToEndAsync provides the asynchronous alternative to ReadToEnd.

See also: TextReader.ReadToEnd, StreamReader, ReadLine, ReadAsync, ReadToEndAsync.