Writing Text to a File

The following code example shows a simple way to write text to a text file.

Imports System
Imports System.IO

Class Test
    Public Shared Sub Main()
        ' Create an instance of StreamWriter to write text to a file.
        Dim sw As StreamWriter = New StreamWriter("TestFile.txt")
        ' Add some text to the file.
        sw.Write("This is the ")
        sw.WriteLine("header for the file.")
        sw.WriteLine("-------------------")
        ' Arbitrary objects can also be written to the file.
        sw.Write("The date is: ")
        sw.WriteLine(DateTime.Now)
        sw.Close()
    End Sub
End Class

[C#]
using System;
using System.IO;

class Test 
{
    public static void Main() 
    {
        // Create an instance of StreamWriter to write text to a file.
        // The using statement also closes the StreamWriter.
        using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter("TestFile.txt")) 
        {
            // Add some text to the file.
            sw.Write("This is the ");
            sw.WriteLine("header for the file.");
            sw.WriteLine("-------------------");
            // Arbitrary objects can also be written to the file.
            sw.Write("The date is: ");
            sw.WriteLine(DateTime.Now);
        }
    }
}

The following code example creates a new text file and writes a string to it.

Option Explicit On 
Option Strict On
Imports System
Imports System.IO
Public Class TextToFile
    Private Const FILE_NAME As String = "MyFile.txt"
    Public Shared Sub Main()
        If File.Exists(FILE_NAME) Then
            Console.WriteLine("{0} already exists.", FILE_NAME)
            Return
        End If
        Dim sr As StreamWriter = File.CreateText(FILE_NAME)
        sr.WriteLine("This is my file.")
        sr.WriteLine("I can write ints {0} or floats {1}, and so on.", 1, 4.2)
        sr.Close()
    End Sub
End Class

[C#]
using System;
using System.IO;
public class TextToFile 
{
    private const string FILE_NAME = "MyFile.txt";
    public static void Main(String[] args) 
    {
        if (File.Exists(FILE_NAME)) 
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} already exists.", FILE_NAME);
            return;
        }
        StreamWriter sr = File.CreateText(FILE_NAME);
        sr.WriteLine ("This is my file.");
        sr.WriteLine ("I can write ints {0} or floats {1}, and so on.", 
            1, 4.2);
        sr.Close();
    }
}

See Also

Creating a Directory Listing | Reading and Writing to a Newly Created Data File | Opening and Appending to a Log File | Reading Text from a File | Reading Characters from a String | Writing Characters to a String | Basic File I/O | StreamWriter | File.CreateText