Quite a lot of helper files needed for average applications are best stored as resource. This way separation of data and code is kept on logical level but everything gets stored in one executable so nothing can be lost.

In order to make some file resource only thing needed is selecting “Properties” from context menu and setting “Build Action” to “Embedded Resource”. Reading this from code is equally easy (assuming program is called MyProgram and resource file is called Test.txt):

Stream myStream = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream("MyProgram.Test.txt");

It is easy as it can be and I was very surprised when I could not get this to work. I added file “File.hr.xml” to project and I embedded it correctly but GetManifestResourceStream method returned null for it. Documentation says that this can only happen when resource is not there and this was impossible in my case.

In order to confirm this I looped through all resources I had embedded:

foreach (string name in Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceNames()) {
    Debug.WriteLine(name);
}

To my surprise documentation was correct, my file simply wasn’t there. However, in my bin folder there was subfolder named “hr” with “MyProgram.resources” file inside.

Then it hit me. Problem was in multi-dotted extension with valid language code as first part. These files are understood by Visual Studio as being language specific and reading them from another culture is not possible (ok, it is possible but not easy).

Since I really wanted this resource to be available regardless of localization, solution was simple. I just renamed file to “File-HR.xml” and it magically appeared in resource list.