how to save the linked list to text file? in C#

Question

How to save this content in text file? in C#

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace LinkList
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            list x = null;
            list first;
            Random rnd = new Random();
            x = new list();
            first = x;
            x.data = rnd.Next(20, 500);
            x.next = null;
            for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
            {
                x.next = new list(); //create new node
                x = x.next;
                x.next = null;
                //x.data = System.Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine());
                x.data = rnd.Next(20, 500);
            }
            x = first;
            int count = 0;
            int y;
            while (x != null)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(x.data);
                x = x.next;

            }
        }
    }
    class list
    {
        public int data; //4 byte
        public list next;  // 4 byte
    }
}

Answer 1

One possible way would be to serialize it. JSON is a pretty standard format, so you could use a JSON serializer such as Newtonsoft.JSON :

string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(first);
File.WriteAllText("list.txt", json);

Or if you don't want to use third party libraries you could use the JavaScriptSerializer class that's built into the framework to achieve the same:

string json = new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(first);
File.WriteAllText("list.txt", json);

If you prefer XML as serialization format you could do this instead:

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(list));
using (var output = File.OpenWrite("list.xml"))
{
    serializer.Serialize(output, first);
}

For this to work you might need to make the list class public because in your example it is internal .