I have a string which contains binary data (non-text data).
How do I convert this to a raw byte array?
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may I ask where did you get such a string?Pavel Radzivilovsky– Pavel Radzivilovsky2010-04-10 16:24:04 +00:00Commented Apr 10, 2010 at 16:24
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1is your string base 64 encoded?Ray– Ray2010-04-10 16:27:12 +00:00Commented Apr 10, 2010 at 16:27
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non-text binary != string: marcgravell.blogspot.com/2010/03/binary-data-and-strings.htmlMarc Gravell– Marc Gravell2010-04-10 17:30:08 +00:00Commented Apr 10, 2010 at 17:30
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4 Answers
A string in C# - by definition - does not contain binary data. It consists of a sequence of Unicode characters.
If your string contains only Unicode characters in the ASCII (7-bit) character set, you can use Encoding.ASCII to convert the string to bytes:
byte[] result = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(input);
If you have a string that contains Unicode characters in the range u0000-u00ff and want to interpret these as bytes, you can cast the characters to bytes:
byte[] result = new byte[input.Length];
for (int i = 0; i < input.Length; i++)
{
result[i] = (byte)input[i];
}
1 Comment
Joel
Ok. So I probably should have a String in the first place. Thanks.
It is a very bad idea to store binary data in a string. However, if you absolutely must do so, you can convert a binary string to a byte array using the 1252 code page. Do not use code page 0 or you will lose some values when in foreign languages. It just so happens that code page 1252 properly converts all byte values from 0 to 255 to Unicode and back again.
There have been some poorly written VB6 programs that use binary strings. Unfortunately some are so many lines of code that it is almost impossible to convert it all to byte() arrays in one go.
You've been warned. Use at your own peril:
Dim bData() As Byte
Dim sData As String
'convert string binary to byte array
bData = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(1252).GetBytes(sData)
'convert byte array to string binary
sData = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(1252).GetString(bData)
6 Comments
Abyx
You can't use CP1252 for
'\x80' character, it converts to '?'.
Brain2000
byte x80 converts to Unicode value x20ac, and back again. How did you get a question mark?
Abyx
Maybe it depends on system. I used
BitConverter.ToString(Encoding.GetEncoding(1252).GetBytes("\x80")) and got 3F. You can try it on ideone.comBrain2000
The BitConverter.ToString() is not actually codepage 1252. It returned me the string "80" as two separate characters "8" and "0". I'm talking about storing actual binary in a string type. For example, this will turn x80 from a byte to a string, and then back to a byte: MessageBox.Show(Encoding.GetEncoding(1252).GetByte(Encoding.GetEncoding(1252).GetString(128))))
Brain2000
Mistake on that line, and couldn't edit my comment. It should read: MessageBox.Show(Encoding.GetEncoding(1252).GetBytes(Encoding.GetEncoding(1252).GetString(New Byte() {128}))(0))
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Here is one way:
public static byte[] StrToByteArray(string str)
{
System.Text.ASCIIEncoding encoding=new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();
return encoding.GetBytes(str);
}
System.Text.ASCIIEncoding encoding = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();
byte[] theBytes = encoding.GetBytes("Some String");
Note, there are other encoding formats you may want to use.
1 Comment
Pavel Radzivilovsky
won't work. Contents of source is assumed in UTF-16, which will fail on some byte value combinations.