How to write super-fast file-streaming code in C#?

Question

I have to split a huge file into many smaller files. Each of the destination files is defined by an offset and length as the number of bytes. I'm using the following code:

private void copy(string srcFile, string dstFile, int offset, int length)
{
    BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(File.OpenRead(srcFile));
    reader.BaseStream.Seek(offset, SeekOrigin.Begin);
    byte[] buffer = reader.ReadBytes(length);

    BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(File.OpenWrite(dstFile));
    writer.Write(buffer);
}

Considering that I have to call this function about 100,000 times, it is remarkably slow.

2. Is there a way to make the Writer connected directly to the Reader? (That is, without actually loading the contents into the Buffer in memory.)

Answer 1

I don't believe there's anything within .NET to allow copying a section of a file without buffering it in memory. However, it strikes me that this is inefficient anyway, as it needs to open the input file and seek many times. If you're just splitting up the file, why not open the input file once, and then just write something like:

public static void CopySection(Stream input, string targetFile, int length)
{
    byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];

    using (Stream output = File.OpenWrite(targetFile))
    {
        int bytesRead = 1;
        // This will finish silently if we couldn't read "length" bytes.
        // An alternative would be to throw an exception
        while (length > 0 && bytesRead > 0)
        {
            bytesRead = input.Read(buffer, 0, Math.Min(length, buffer.Length));
            output.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            length -= bytesRead;
        }
    }
}

This has a minor inefficiency in creating a buffer on each invocation - you might want to create the buffer once and pass that into the method as well:

public static void CopySection(Stream input, string targetFile,
                               int length, byte[] buffer)
{
    using (Stream output = File.OpenWrite(targetFile))
    {
        int bytesRead = 1;
        // This will finish silently if we couldn't read "length" bytes.
        // An alternative would be to throw an exception
        while (length > 0 && bytesRead > 0)
        {
            bytesRead = input.Read(buffer, 0, Math.Min(length, buffer.Length));
            output.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            length -= bytesRead;
        }
    }
}

Note that this also closes the output stream (due to the using statement) which your original code didn't.

The important point is that this will use the operating system file buffering more efficiently, because you reuse the same input stream, instead of reopening the file at the beginning and then seeking.

I think it'll be significantly faster, but obviously you'll need to try it to see...

This assumes contiguous chunks, of course. If you need to skip bits of the file, you can do that from outside the method. Also, if you're writing very small files, you may want to optimise for that situation too - the easiest way to do that would probably be to introduce a BufferedStream wrapping the input stream.

Answer 2

The fastest way to do file I/O from C# is to use the Windows ReadFile and WriteFile functions. I have written a C# class that encapsulates this capability as well as a benchmarking program that looks at differnet I/O methods, including BinaryReader and BinaryWriter. See my blog post at:

http://designingefficientsoftware.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/efficient-file-io-from-csharp/

Answer 3

How large is length? You may do better to re-use a fixed sized (moderately large, but not obscene) buffer, and forget BinaryReader... just use Stream.Read and Stream.Write.

(edit) something like:

private static void copy(string srcFile, string dstFile, int offset,
     int length, byte[] buffer)
{
    using(Stream inStream = File.OpenRead(srcFile))
    using (Stream outStream = File.OpenWrite(dstFile))
    {
        inStream.Seek(offset, SeekOrigin.Begin);
        int bufferLength = buffer.Length, bytesRead;
        while (length > bufferLength &&
            (bytesRead = inStream.Read(buffer, 0, bufferLength)) > 0)
        {
            outStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            length -= bytesRead;
        }
        while (length > 0 &&
            (bytesRead = inStream.Read(buffer, 0, length)) > 0)
        {
            outStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            length -= bytesRead;
        }
    }        
}

Answer 4

You shouldn't re-open the source file each time you do a copy, better open it once and pass the resulting BinaryReader to the copy function. Also, it might help if you order your seeks, so you don't make big jumps inside the file.

If the lengths aren't too big, you can also try to group several copy calls by grouping offsets that are near to each other and reading the whole block you need for them, for example:

offset = 1234, length = 34
offset = 1300, length = 40
offset = 1350, length = 1000

can be grouped to one read:

offset = 1234, length = 1074

Then you only have to "seek" in your buffer and can write the three new files from there without having to read again.