Q:

Reading files in C#, differences in methods

Studying C#, my books are showing me classes for readin files.  I've found 2 that are very similar and the Visual Studio debugger doesn't show an obvious difference between the two. 
code: 
FileStream fs = new FileStream(path, FileMode. Open, FileAccess. Read);

FileStream fs = File. Open(path, FileMode. Open, FileAccess. Read);

Now I wonder, what's the difference between these 2 ways of reading a file.  Is there any internal difference you know of? 

A:

The latter is just a factory which returns an instance of FileStream.  I.e. they do the same.  
Here's the implementation for Open():
public static FileStream Open(string path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share) {

   return new FileStream(path, mode, access, share);

}

A:

If you read the documentation, you'll find they are the same.