Revisions to How do I get a consistent byte representation of strings in C# without manually specifying an encoding?

Copy edited. Named a link. Removed historical information (e.g. ref. <http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/230693> and <http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/266164>).

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edited Apr 24, 2015 at 9:52

Peter Mortensen

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It depends on the encoding of your string (ASCIIASCII, UTF8UTF-8, ...).

e.g.For example:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

Update: A A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //willWill print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //willWill print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //willWill print '?'

ASCII simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters.

Internally, the .NET framework uses UTF16UTF-16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...).

See msdnCharacter Encoding in the .NET Framework (MSDN) for more information.

It depends on the encoding of your string (ASCII, UTF8, ...).

e.g.:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

Update: A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //will print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //will print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //will print '?'

ASCII simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters.

Internally, the .NET framework uses UTF16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...).

See msdn for more information.

It depends on the encoding of your string (ASCII, UTF-8, ...).

For example:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //Will print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //Will print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //Will print '?'

ASCII simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters.

Internally, the .NET framework uses UTF-16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...).

See Character Encoding in the .NET Framework (MSDN) for more information.

code formatting

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edit approved Jul 1, 2011 at 8:44

bluish

27.5k
28
126
185

itIt depends on the encoding of your string (asciiASCII, utf8UTF8, ...).

e.g.:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

Update: A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //will print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //will print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //will print '?'

AsciiASCII simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters.

internallyInternally, the .NET framework uses UTF16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (..System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...).)

seeSee msdn for more information.

it depends on the encoding of your string (ascii, utf8, ...)

e.g.:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

Update: A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //will print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //will print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //will print '?'

Ascii simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters

internally, the .NET framework uses UTF16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...)

see msdn for more information

It depends on the encoding of your string (ASCII, UTF8, ...).

e.g.:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

Update: A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //will print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //will print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //will print '?'

ASCII simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters.

Internally, the .NET framework uses UTF16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...).

See msdn for more information.

added 781 characters in body

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edited Jan 23, 2009 at 14:07

bmotmans

15.8k
5
22
14

it depends on the encoding of your string (ascii, utf8, ...)

e.g.:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

Update: A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //will print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //will print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //will print '?'

Ascii simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters

internally, the .NET framework uses UTF16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...)

see msdn for more information

it depends on the encoding of your string (ascii, utf8, ...)

e.g.:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

it depends on the encoding of your string (ascii, utf8, ...)

e.g.:

byte[] b1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (myString);
byte[] b2 = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (myString);

Update: A small sample why encoding matters:

string pi = "\u03a0";
byte[] ascii = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes (pi);
byte[] utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (pi);
        
Console.WriteLine (ascii.Length); //will print 1
Console.WriteLine (utf8.Length); //will print 2
Console.WriteLine (System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString (ascii)); //will print '?'

Ascii simply isn't equipped to deal with special characters

internally, the .NET framework uses UTF16 to represent strings, so if you simply want to get the exact bytes that .NET uses, use System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes (...)

see msdn for more information

Source Link

answered Jan 23, 2009 at 13:43

bmotmans

15.8k
5
22
14

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