C#: Converting byte array to string and printing out to console

Question

public void parse_table(BinaryReader inFile)
{
    byte[] idstring = inFile.ReadBytes(6);
    Console.WriteLine(Convert.ToString(idstring));
}

It is a simple snippet: read the first 6 bytes of the file and convert that to a string.

However the console shows System.Byte[].

Maybe I'm using the wrong class for conversion. What should I be using? It will eventually be parsing filenames encoded in UTF-8, and I'm planning to use the same method to read all filenames.

Answer 1

It's actually:

    Console.WriteLine(Encoding.Default.GetString(value));

or for UTF-8 specifically:

    Console.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(value));

Answer 2

I was in a predicament where I had a signed byte array (sbyte[]) as input to a Test class and I wanted to replace it with a normal byte array (byte[]) for simplicity. I arrived here from a Google search but Tom's answer wasn't useful to me.

I wrote a helper method to print out the initializer of a given byte[]:

public void PrintByteArray(byte[] bytes)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder("new byte[] { ");
    foreach (var b in bytes)
    {
        sb.Append(b + ", ");
    }
    sb.Append("}");
    Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
}

You can use it like this:

var signedBytes = new sbyte[] { 1, 2, 3, -1, -2, -3, 127, -128, 0, };
var unsignedBytes = UnsignedBytesFromSignedBytes(signedBytes);
PrintByteArray(unsignedBytes);
// output:
// new byte[] { 1, 2, 3, 255, 254, 253, 127, 128, 0, }

The ouput is valid C# which can then just be copied into your code.

And just for completeness, here is the UnsignedBytesFromSignedBytes method:

// http://stackoverflow.com/a/829994/346561
public static byte[] UnsignedBytesFromSignedBytes(sbyte[] signed)
{
    var unsigned = new byte[signed.Length];
    Buffer.BlockCopy(signed, 0, unsigned, 0, signed.Length);
    return unsigned;
}

Answer 3

I've used this simple code in my codebase:

static public string ToReadableByteArray(byte[] bytes)
{
    return string.Join(", ", bytes);
}

To use:

Console.WriteLine(ToReadableByteArray(bytes));

Answer 4

This is just an updated version of Jesse Webbs code that doesn't append the unnecessary trailing , character.

public static string PrintBytes(this byte[] byteArray)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder("new byte[] { ");
    for(var i = 0; i < byteArray.Length;i++)
    {
        var b = byteArray[i];
        sb.Append(b);
        if (i < byteArray.Length -1)
        {
            sb.Append(", ");
        }
    }
    sb.Append(" }");
    return sb.ToString();
}

The output from this method would be:

new byte[] { 48, ... 135, 31, 178, 7, 157 }

Answer 5

 byte[] bytes = { 1,2,3,4 };

 string stringByte= BitConverter.ToString(bytes);

 Console.WriteLine(stringByte);

Answer 6

For some fun with linq and string interpolation:

public string ByteArrayToString(byte[] bytes)
{
    if ( bytes == null ) return "null";
    string joinedBytes = string.Join(", ", bytes.Select(b => b.ToString()));
    return $"new byte[] {{ {joinedBytes} }}";
}

Test cases:

byte[] bytes = { 1, 2, 3, 4 };
ByteArrayToString( bytes ) .Dump();
ByteArrayToString(null).Dump();
ByteArrayToString(new byte[] {} ) .Dump();

Output:

new byte[] { 1, 2, 3, 4 }
null
new byte[] {  }