Closing StreamReader after ReadToEnd

Question

Is it possible somehow to close StreamReader after calling ReadToEnd method in construction like this:

string s = new StreamReader("filename", Encoding.UTF8).ReadToEnd();

Any alternative elegant construction with the same semantics will be also accepted.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could use a using statement, which automatically closes the stream:

string s = null;    
using ( StreamReader reader = new StreamReader( "filename", Encoding.UTF8 ) { s = reader.ReadToEnd(); }

Answer 2

No there isn't but it's always a good practice to use dispose objects who inherit form IDisposable. If you don't do this in a loop you will get memory leaks

string s = string.Empty;
using(StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("filename", Encoding.UTF8))
{
  s = sr.ReadToEnd();
}

Answer 3

I think the method you're really after is File.ReadAllText, if you're just trying to read all the text from a file in the shortest possible code.

If you don't specify the encoding, it will use UTF-8 automatically.