FileStream vs/differences StreamWriter?

Question

Question:

What is different between FileStream and StreamWriter in .Net?

What context are you supposed to use it?

Answer 1

They are two different levels used in outputting information to known data sources.

A FileStream is a type of Stream, which is conceptually a mechanism that points to some location and can handle incoming and/or outgoing data to and from that location. Streams exist for reading/writing to files, network connections, memory, pipes, the console, debug and trace listeners, and a few other types of data sources. Specifically, a FileStream exists to perform reads and writes to the file system. Most streams are pretty low-level in their usage, and deal with data as bytes.

A StreamWriter is a wrapper for a Stream that simplifies using that stream to output plain text. It exposes methods that take strings instead of bytes, and performs the necessary conversions to and from byte arrays. There are other Writers; the other main one you'd use is the XmlTextWriter, which facilitates writing data in XML format. There are also Reader counterparts to the Writers that similarly wrap a Stream and facilitate getting the data back out.