C# Binary Reader

Question

I'm making an encryption program and need to save the encrypted password to a file using the binary reader and writer. When i try and read the data out all I get is a number. What did I do wrong?

 public static string readData(string fileName)
    {
        string data;

        FileStream fStream = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);

        using (BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(fStream))
        {
            data = reader.Read().ToString();
        }

        return data;   
    }

And the writer

 public static void writeData(string fileName, string data)
 {

  using (BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(File.Open (fileName, FileMode.Create)))
        {
            writer.Write(data);
        }
    }

What does the documentation for BinaryReader.Read() tell you? — Jon Skeet
– Jon Skeet, Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 19:48
Please tell me this is a learning exercise and not for use in any type of production system. — Tom Studee
– Tom Studee, Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 19:49
This is a learning exersize. I'm a hobbyist as well, newer to c#. Please tell me what's so bad about what I coded. @TomStudee — user3453481
– user3453481, Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 19:51
@user3453481 Nothing bad at all, and no offense. Even most experienced programmers shouldn't be rolling encryption software from scratch. It's a very specialized area. But, learning is always encouraged. — Tom Studee
– Tom Studee, Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 19:53
Oh ok, and yes I had to look up examples of encryption coding, as the algorithims can get very complex. This is just a quick program I'm making for fun that could hold my passwords and encrypt them. Should I be using a different way to save the data instead of into a binary file? — user3453481
– user3453481, Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 19:55

Selman Genç · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-13 19:57:33Z

1

Use reader.ReadString() instead.

data = reader.ReadString();

The Read method reads the next character and returns the corresponding integer value of it as you can see in the documentation.basically, you have written a string to your file in binary format, so you need to read it back.

edited Apr 13, 2014 at 19:57

answered Apr 13, 2014 at 19:48

Selman Genç

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Comments

driis · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-13 19:48:52Z

1

That is because you are calling the Read method that returns a single integer.¨

You want to do ReadString.

answered Apr 13, 2014 at 19:48

driis

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2 Comments

Uwe Keim Over a year ago

Most likely he doesn't want. After all how fits a string together with reading and writing binary data?

driis Over a year ago

Well he did say he was writing the password to a file using WriteString, so ReadString will be fine for reading it back. (I actually started the answer with ReadBytes, but then went back and read the question again).

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