Why wont console.SetOut(StreamWriter) write to my file?

Question

Creating a console app and I'm trying to set up a log file to keep track of the activities of my application. This is how I'm setting up my FileStream and Writer.

FileStream logstrm;
StreamWriter logwriter;
logstrm = new FileStream("file.txt", FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write);
logwriter = new StreamWriter(logstrm);

Before calling SetOut, the following properly outputs the text to the console.

Console.WriteLine("LOG FILES CREATED");

However, once I do the following, I expect the text to be written to file.txt, but there is nothing in the file when I open it.

Console.SetOut(logwriter);
Console.WriteLine("TEXT EXPECTED TO BE IN FILE.TXT");

Any ideas or am I just doing this completely wrong?

Answer 1

Simply you don't close the output file

logwriter.Close();

Either use Flush or Close the file

PS: Another test: You can continue to write to console till you exceed the internal buffer size and then you will see that some chars are written to file

Answer 2

File I/O is buffered and may need to be flushed to actually write to the file.

You can explicitly flush to file by calling StreamWriter.Flush ; alternatively you could set AutoFlush so that the stream is flushed after every call to Write.

Files are automatically flushed on Close .