Byte Array to String in C#

Question

As Im new to C# and I am stuck with a very basic problem.

I am reading one text file, which contains some data(for example "hello") I am reading this data like the code mentioned below.

System.IO.Stream myStream;
Int32 fileLen;
StringBuilder displayString = new StringBuilder();

// Get the length of the file.
fileLen = FileUploadId.PostedFile.ContentLength;

// Display the length of the file in a label.
string strLengthOfFileInByte = "The length of the file is " +
fileLen.ToString() + " bytes.";

// Create a byte array to hold the contents of the file.
Byte[] Input = new Byte[fileLen];
// Initialize the stream to read the uploaded file.
myStream = FileUploadId.FileContent;

// Read the file into the byte array.
//myStream.Read(Input, 0, fileLen);

myStream.Read(Input, 0, fileLen);

// Copy the byte array to a string.
for (int loop1 = 0; loop1 < fileLen; loop1++)
{
    displayString.Append(Input[loop1].ToString());
}

// Display the contents of the file in a 
string strFinalFileContent = displayString.ToString();

return strFinalFileContent;

I want "hello" should be the value of 'strFinalFileContent'. I am getting "104 101 108 108 111" means decimal values of ASCII characters. Please help me how to get "h e l l o" as output. It might me small question, But I m beginner So please help me.

You need to figure out which encoding the file uses, then decode the bytes using that encoding. — SLaks
– SLaks, Commented Sep 18, 2013 at 13:43

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-18 13:46:50Z

6

You should use an Encoding object to specify which encoding you want to use to convert the binary data into text. It's not clear from your post what the input file actually is, or whether you'll know the encoding in advance - but it's much simpler if you do.

I'd advise you to create a StreamReader using the given encoding, wrapping your stream - and read text from that. Otherwise you could get into interesting difficulties reading "half a character" if the character is split across binary reads.

Also note that this line is dangerous:

myStream.Read(Input, 0, fileLen);

You're assuming that this one Read call will read all the data. In general, that's not true for streams. You should always use the return value for Stream.Read (or TextReader.Read) to see how much you've actually read.

In practice, using a StreamReader will make all of this much simpler. Your entire code can be replaced by:

// Replace Encoding.UTF8 with whichever encoding you're interested in. If you
// don't specify an encoding at all, it will default to UTF-8.
using (var reader = new StreamReader(FileUploadId.FileContent, Encoding.UTF8))
{
    return reader.ReadToEnd();
}

answered Sep 18, 2013 at 13:46

Jon Skeet

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1 Comment

vivek jain Over a year ago

Thanks Jon, It really help me and U have provied me extra information too.

Oliver Kane · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-18 13:50:14Z

0

Read all the text into a string variable

string fileContent;
using(StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("Your file path here")){
    sr.ReadToEnd();
}

Don't forget to use the overload for new StreamReader if you need a specific encoding. StreamReader docs

Then adding a space between each character (that request is strange to me, but if you really want to...)

string withSpaces = string.Concat(fileContent.ToCharArray().Select(n=>n + " ").ToArray());

That will take each character, split it up into an array, project that using linq to add an additional space for each, and then concatenate the results into a joined string.

I hope this solves your problem!

edited Sep 18, 2013 at 13:50

answered Sep 18, 2013 at 13:44

Oliver Kane

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Comments

Mohamed Salemyan · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-18 13:56:06Z

0

string displayString = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Input);

answered Sep 18, 2013 at 13:56

Mohamed Salemyan

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