Writing and saving user input to text file on the desktop

Question

I am new to learning C#, and i'm attempting to create a simple console application that asks the user a set of questions, and then saves the answers into a .txt file on the desktop. However, my below code doesn't seem to work.

static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Enter your first name.");
            string firstName = Console.ReadLine();
            Console.WriteLine("Enter your last name.");
            string lastName = Console.ReadLine();
            Console.WriteLine("Enter your job title.");
            string jobTitle = Console.ReadLine();
            Console.WriteLine("What came first, the chicken or the egg?");
            string chickenEgg = Console.ReadLine();

            string path = @"C:\Users\njones\Desktop\NiallJones.txt";

            File.WriteAllText(path, firstName, lastName, jobTitle, chickenEgg);

            Console.WriteLine("Your information has been recorded. A copy can be found on your desktop.");
        }

I believe the problem lies around the File.WriteAllText part. Please could someone help point me in the right direction as to why this doesn't work, and what I can do in order to improve on this?

Thanks!

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.io.file.writealltext?view=netframework-4.8 shows the methods you can call. None of them take 5 parameters. Hint - create a _single_ string containing everything you want to write to the file. — mjwills, Apr 08 '20 at 10:28
Thanks for your comment. I'll have a look into how to merge all information into 1 string! — NiallUK, Apr 08 '20 at 10:30

Danys Chalifour · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-08T10:47:59.800

2

Always check the documentation of the function you are trying to use.

public static void WriteAllText (string path, string contents);

As you can see, there is two parameter that can go into this function.

To write to the file you'll need to compose a single string (the content). The string type in c# has a operator overload (+) to put string together.

File.WriteAllText(path, firstName+lastName+jobTitle+chickenEgg);

But you will be disapointed when you will read the file it will look like: "NameLastNameJobTitleChickenOrEgg"

So i'd reccomend you put a delimiter between your fields so you can decompose your string with the String.split() function and get individual fields.

Your goal output would be something like: "Name;LastName;JobTitle;ChickenOrEgg"

edited Apr 08 '20 at 10:47

answered Apr 08 '20 at 10:43

Danys Chalifour

322
1
5
12

Thank you for explaining. I will have a look into this. Is it possible to output to a different line in the text file for each question? – NiallUK Apr 08 '20 at 10:45
Just add a line break with Environment.NewLine – Danys Chalifour Apr 08 '20 at 10:53
1

You got flagged as duplicate because the final awnser was to concatenate string. But in reality you didn't understood parameters. – Danys Chalifour Apr 08 '20 at 11:04
Thank you very much for your answer. This helps massively! – NiallUK Apr 08 '20 at 12:36

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 08 '20 at 10:32

1

File.WriteAllText(path, firstName + " " + lastName + " " + jobTitle + " " + chickenEgg );

answered Apr 08 '20 at 10:32

Sandris B

133
6

Thanks. Please can you explain how this works? – NiallUK Apr 08 '20 at 10:33
It creates one string from multiple with space between. – Sandris B Apr 08 '20 at 10:36

Writing and saving user input to text file on the desktop

2 Answers2