Creating a byte array from a stream

Question

What is the prefered method for creating a byte array from an input stream?

Here is my current solution with .NET 3.5.

Stream s;
byte[] b;

using (         


        

Answer 1

Just want to point out that in case you have a MemoryStream you already have memorystream.ToArray() for that.

Also, if you are dealing with streams of unknown or different subtypes and you can receive a MemoryStream, you can relay on said method for those cases and still use the accepted answer for the others, like this:

public static byte[] StreamToByteArray(Stream stream)
{
    if (stream is MemoryStream)
    {
        return ((MemoryStream)stream).ToArray();                
    }
    else
    {
        // Jon Skeet's accepted answer 
        return ReadFully(stream);
    }
}