CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#filetext
DjangoBlockchain
DjangoBlockchain

Reputation: 564

Would reading/writing a file take the same time as moving the file?

I need to make modifications to a textfile and keep the original intact. Right now I am using a reader/writer and reading the file and then writing it back sans the modifications.

Unfortunately the text files are huge, ~2gb and are taking about an hour to complete (as the text files are on a network drive).

Would using the file.Move be faster than reading/writing? For example, move the textfiles to local machine, do the modifications, then move it back?

Or, make a copy of the original and go through and modify it that way, instead of having to read/write?

My current code : 

try
{
    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(filePath))
    {
        using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(output)) 
        { 
            //go through the whole txt file
            while (!reader.EndOfStream)
            {
                //gets the line
                line = reader.ReadLine();
                if (!modification case goes here))
                {
                    writer.Write(line);
                }
            }
        }
    }
  }
}

Any help would be appreciated!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 313

Answers (1)

zmechanic
zmechanic

Reputation: 1990

With attached network drives it's always faster to copy file locally, do whatever and copy it back. This way you use caching and fetch ahead (pre-caching) which is implemented at hardware level of the disk drive. Network throughput is always limited to average formula of Network_T_Rate / 10 expressed in Megabytes-per-second. So, for example, if you have 100T, as most of corporation networks, you'll get ~10Mb/s no matter read or write, as the disk on the other end is faster than network. In other words, your bottleneck is network.

Upvotes: 3

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