The System.IO.FileInfo class is quite similar to the System.IO.File class in that, they are used for the same purpose of manipulating a file. The difference is that FileInfo does not have static methods so you need to create an instance of it first. The created FileInfoobject represents a file in the disk.

FileInfo file = new FileInfo(@"C:Filessample.txt");

The constructor accepts the file path of the file that the object will represent. Because we indicated the path in our constructor, calling the methods such as Create, Delete, Move, and Copy is simpler because we don’t have to repeat indicating the file path or source path in the method calls. For example, the following shows the difference of the System.IO.File and System.IO.FileInfo classes when calling the Create method.

FileInfo file = new FileInfo(@"C:Filessample.txt");
file.Create();
File.Create(@"C:Filessample.txt");

And the following shows the difference of moving and copying files.

file.CopyTo(@"C:Destsample.txt");
file.MoveTo(@"C:Destsample.txt");
File.Copy(@"C:Sourcesample.txt", @"C:Destsample.txt");
File.Move(@"C:Sourcesample.txt", @"C:Destsample.txt");

Note that we used CopyTo and MoveTo for the FileInfo object instead of Copy and Move and we only indicated the destination since the source path was indicated when we created the object.

The following are some of the basic methods of the FileInfo class.

Method Description
Create Creates a new file.
Delete Deletes the file associated with the FileInfo object.
CopyTo Copies the file to the indicated destination path. An overload accepts a second boolean argument indicating whether to overwrite any existing file in the destination path.
MoveTo Moves the file to the indicated destination path.
Open Creats a FileStream that can be used to read or write to the file.

Figure 1 – FileInfo Methods

The following are some of the properties of the FileInfo class.

Property Description
CreationTime Get’s the time the file was created. Returns the result as a DateTime object.
Directory Returns the DirectoryInfo which contains the information of the directory where the file is located.
Exists Tells whether the specified path in the constructor exists in the file system.
Extention Returns the extension name of the file as string. (“.txt”)
IsReadOnly Tells whether the file is read-only.
LastAccessTime Gets the last time the file was accessed. Returns the result as a DateTime object.
LastWriteTime Gets the last time the file’s content was modified. Returns the result as a DateTime object.
Length Gets the size in bytes of the current file.
Name Gets the file name of the file. (“sample.txt”)
FullName Gets the full name of the file. (“C:Filessample.txt”)

Figure 2 – FileInfo Properties

More properties and methods are present in the FileInfo object and we will discuss them as we progress further to the next lessons.