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

In case anyone likes it, here is a .NET 4+ only solution formed as an extension method without the needless Dispose call on the MemoryStream. This is a hopelessly trivial optimization, but it is worth noting that failing to Dispose a MemoryStream is not a real failure.

public static class StreamHelpers
{
    public static byte[] ReadFully(this Stream input)
    {
        var ms = new MemoryStream();
        input.CopyTo(ms);
        return ms.ToArray();
    }
}