Delphi (XE6) : Array of Byte to TStringList

Question

I have a function which returns a dynamic array of byte

type
  TMyEncrypt = Array of Byte;
  TMyDecrypt = Array of Byte;

function decrypt(original: TMyEncrypt) : TMyDecrypt;

The content of the returned dynamic array TMyDecrypt is a standard text with CRLF.

How can i load this into a TStringList with CRLF as separator, without saving it to a temporary file before?

EDIT: the retruned array of byte contains unicode coded characters

Answer 1

Decode the byte array to a string, and then assign to the Text property of the string list.

var
  Bytes: TBytes;
  StringList: TStringList;
....
StringList.Text := TEncoding.Unicode.GetString(Bytes);

Note the use of TBytes which is the standard type used to hold dynamic arrays of bytes. For compatibility reasons it makes sense to use TBytes . That way your data can be processed by other RTL and library code. A fact we immediately take advantage of by using TEncoding .

You could use SetString , as my answer originally suggested:

var
  Text: string;
  Bytes: TBytes;
  StringList: TStringList;
....
SetString(Text, PChar(Bytes), Length(Bytes) div SizeOf(Char)));
StringList.Text := Text;

Personally I prefer to use TEncoding because it is very explicit about the encoding being used.

If your text was null terminated then you could use:

StringList.Text := PChar(Bytes);

Again, I'd prefer to be explicit about the encoding. And I might be a little paranoid about my data somehow not being null terminated.

You might find that UTF-8 is a more efficient representation than UTF-16.