Problem Statement

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.

Let's start with the solution:

' FB 1.05.0 Win64

Open "input.txt" For Input Encoding "ascii" As #1
Dim fileLen As LongInt = Lof(1) '' get file length in bytes
Dim buffer As String = Space(fileLen) '' allocate a string of size 'fileLen' bytes
Get #1, 1, buffer '' read all data from start of file into the buffer
Print buffer  '' print to console
buffer = ""  '' release memory used by setting buffer to empty
Close #1
Sleep