C#/.NET - Custom Binary File Formats - Where to Start?

Question

I need to be able to store some data in a custom binary file format. I\'ve never designed my own file format before. It needs to be a friendly format for traveling between the C

Answer 1

How about looking at using "protocol buffers"? Designed as an efficient, portable, version-tolerant general purpose binary format, it gives you C++, Java and Python in the google library, and C#, Perl, Ruby and others in the community ports?

Note that Guid doesn't have a specific data type, but you can shim it as a message with (essentially) a byte[].

Normally for .NET work, I'd recommend protobuf-net (but as the author, I'm somewhat biased) - however, if you intend to use other languages later you might do better (long term) using Jon's dotnet-protobufs; that'll give you a familiar API accross the platforms (where-as protobuf-net uses .NET idioms).