Byte[] to ASCII

Question

I received the contents of a text file returned in binary values:

Byte[] buf = new Byte[size];
stream = File.InputStream;
stream.Read(buf, 0, size);

Answer 1

Encoding.GetString Method (Byte[]) convert bytes to a string.

When overridden in a derived class, decodes all the bytes in the specified byte array into a string.

Namespace: System.Text
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

Syntax

public virtual string GetString(byte[] bytes)

Parameters

bytes
    Type: System.Byte[]
    The byte array containing the sequence of bytes to decode.

Return Value

Type: System.String
A String containing the results of decoding the specified sequence of bytes.

Exceptions

ArgumentException        - The byte array contains invalid Unicode code points.
ArgumentNullException    - bytes is null.
DecoderFallbackException - A fallback occurred (see Character Encoding in the .NET Framework for complete explanation) or DecoderFallback is set to DecoderExceptionFallback.

Remarks

If the data to be converted is available only in sequential blocks (such as data read from a stream) or if the amount of data is so large that it needs to be divided into smaller blocks, the application should use the Decoder or the Encoder provided by the GetDecoder method or the GetEncoder method, respectively, of a derived class.

See the Remarks under Encoding.GetChars for more discussion of decoding techniques and considerations.