How Can I Convert Strings to Byte Arrays in .NET without Encoding?

Direct String-to-Byte Array Conversion in .NET

Frequently, .NET developers need to convert strings into byte arrays. The default UTF-16 encoding in .NET can be problematic when dealing with strings using different character encodings. This article presents a method to obtain the raw byte representation of a string without explicit encoding.

Byte Representation without Encoding

This technique directly copies the string's character data into a byte array, bypassing character encoding:

static byte[] GetBytes(string str)
{
    byte[] bytes = new byte[str.Length * sizeof(char)];
    System.Buffer.BlockCopy(str.ToCharArray(), 0, bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
    return bytes;
}

Because .NET characters are 16-bit Unicode, the byte array's size is str.Length * sizeof(char) (character count multiplied by 2 bytes per character).

String Reconstruction from Bytes

To recreate the original string:

static string GetString(byte[] bytes)
{
    char[] chars = new char[bytes.Length / sizeof(char)];
    System.Buffer.BlockCopy(bytes, 0, chars, 0, bytes.Length);
    return new string(chars);
}

This mirrors the conversion process, copying bytes back to a character array and creating a string.

Benefits of this Method

This approach offers several key benefits:

• Encoding Agnostic: No need to specify an encoding; bytes directly represent Unicode characters.
• Robust Error Handling: Handles invalid characters without errors; bytes are treated as raw data.
• Intra-System Efficiency: Ideal for same-system communication, maximizing efficiency and preventing encoding discrepancies.

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