C# getting a string[] from byte[]

Question

I have a array byte[]. It contains the lines of a string[], seperated with line breaks. What would the best way to get the string[] back from the byte[]? Encoding is utf-8.

byte[] lines[];

string[] str = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(lines).Split(new string[] { "\r\n", "\n" }, StringSplitOptions.None);

Would be an option, but maybe there is a better way.

Answer 1

I think that solution you provided in quiestion is the best way. I don't know any other methods of getting string from byte array (knowing the encoding) or splitting string into array.

Answer 2

Dependent on your source of string[] , you could potentially use BinaryFormatter and then Serialize your string[] to a byte[] first off and then Deserialize back to a string[] later on; however this means that you will need the string[] first off so it sort of defeats the object...

The code you have mentioned is probably the best way, if I am perfectly honest and as other have suggested - you can read each byte with a StringBuilder but that is probably even messier.

Here is the link to BinaryFormatter