Chapter 9. File Handling: The Adventure Kit

You are beginning to see how important data is to a programmer. Often, even when your program is not running, you want the data in your program to be permanently stored so that you can retrieve it later. Modern languages such as C# support many tools for storing and retrieving information on disk drives. In this chapter you will learn two of the most basic and important schemes: text file management and object serialization. Text files are used to store basic data, and object serialization enables you to save and load entire objects. You will also learn how to use dialog boxes to streamline certain kinds of user interaction and how to add menus to your programs. In this chapter you will learn how to

• Store and load a plain text file to a disk.

• Use file streams to manage your interactions with disk files.

• Create multilevel menu systems on your forms.

• Use the File, Font, and Color dialog boxes to interact with the user.

• Store entire classes with object serialization.

• Write programs that use multiple forms.