How do I copy the contents of one stream to another?

Question

What is the best way to copy the contents of one stream to another? Is there a standard utility method for this?

Answer 1

There is actually, a less heavy-handed way of doing a stream copy. Take note however, that this implies that you can store the entire file in memory. Don't try and use this if you are working with files that go into the hundreds of megabytes or more, without caution.

public static void CopySmallTextStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
  using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(input))
  using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(output))
  {
    writer.Write(reader.ReadToEnd());
  }
}

NOTE: There may also be some issues concerning binary data and character encodings.