Why is this an issue?

Invoking a stream reading method without verifying the number of bytes read can lead to erroneous assumptions. A Stream can represent any I/O operation, such as reading a file, network communication, or inter-process communication. As such, it is not guaranteed that the byte[] passed into the method will be filled with the requested number of bytes. Therefore, inspecting the value returned by the reading method is important to ensure the number of bytes read.

Neglecting the returned length read can result in a bug that is difficult to reproduce.

This rule raises an issue when the returned value is ignored for the following methods:

How to fix it

Check the return value of stream reading methods to verify the actual number of bytes read, and use this value when processing the data to avoid potential bugs.

Code examples

Noncompliant code example

public byte[] ReadFile(string fileName)
{
    using var stream = File.Open(fileName, FileMode.Open);
    var result = new byte[stream.Length];

    stream.Read(result, 0, (int)stream.Length); // Noncompliant

    return result;
}

Compliant solution

public byte[] ReadFile(string fileName)
{
    using var stream = File.Open(fileName, FileMode.Open);
    using var ms = new MemoryStream();
    var buffer = new byte[1024];
    int read;

    while ((read = stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
    {
        ms.Write(buffer, 0, read);
    }

    return ms.ToArray();
}

Resources

Documentation