Am I going stone mad ? MSDN

Elfman

Hi All,

During my time (well 3rd and 4th) I did most of my programming in Java. During this time I became accustomed to using the java class library, I've always found it easy to use well laid out.

Now I'm out of college and using Visual studio. Now in general I like visual studio and coming from a java background I'm taking to it quite quickly however I have a issue when it comes to the class library.

I find it a bit cluttered but my real problem is this I'm using System.io.Streamwriter, now I'm creating an instance of streamwriter and passing a parameter (a destination file) to the constructor, fine. The problem is I went to class reference section for this class to see what variable was being used to hold the parameter and i can't find it.

It has a section for constructors and each one gets it's own sub section but I've gone tot eh right section and all it does is tell me what the constructor dose

Am I missing something?

- Elfman

dzy

Elfman wrote: »

...to see what variable was being used to hold the parameter and i can't find it.

Sorry You lost me here. What do you mean by "what variable was being used to hold the parameter"?

I hear you though. I find the site very frustrating to use. There are not enough examples on how to use the framework. I mostly end up going to external sites to read some tutorials.

ressem

There isn't a member variable in StreamWriter which directly provides access to the filename.

Reason is that the underlying stream could be lots of things other than a file.

So what you can do is...

1. Confirm that the type of the BaseStream is of type System.IO.FileStream
2. Assuming that is the case, you can cast the BaseStream to a filestream. Then you can use the "Name" member variable to get the filename underlying the stream.

Something like

if (appStreamwriter.BaseStream.GetType() == typeof( System.IO.FileStream) )
{
    FileStream fs = (FileStream)appStreamwriter.BaseStream;
    Console.WriteLine(fs.Name);
}

Hobbes

Small bit off topic but I found the free version of VS a bit limiting and didn't give all the data that you needed all the time. Got the full MSDN license recently and it is much better.

Although I still prefer Java.

ressem

Just using the Object Browser in VS might be quicker (Ctrl- Alt- J)

But I'm guessing that you're using the website.
If you use the breadcrumb trail at the top of the page to navigate for the field/members etc, you might find it easier.

That's the bit that goes
MSDN > MSDN Library > Net Development > ...
> System.IO.Namespace > StreamWriter Class

Holding the mouse pointer over an entry will list the possible subsections (Member, Constructor, Fields, Method, Properties)