Task

Load the entire contents of some text file as a single string variable.

If applicable, discuss: encoding selection, the possibility of memory-mapping.

Of course, in practice one should avoid reading an entire file at once
if the file is large and the task can be accomplished incrementally instead
(in which case check File IO);
this is for those cases where having the entire file is actually what is wanted.




using System.IO;
 
class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var fileContents = File.ReadAllText("c:\\autoexec.bat");  
        // Can optionally take a second parameter to specify the encoding, e.g. File.ReadAllText("c:\\autoexec.bat", Encoding.UTF8)
    }
}