Question

I am reading a binary file of a specific format, and am used to being able to cast a block of data to a struct then reading the struct to pull fields out of the binary datafile.

I’m trying to do this but failing in C#, they seem more like classes than structures in the C sense. Is it possible to do what I want? For example..

public struct Datum {
    byte type;
    ushort payload;
}

public struct DiskPage {
    ushort pageNumber;
    Datum[] data = Datum[170];
}

I want to be able to read 512 bytes of a file and cast it to a DiskPage, then to be able to read the values from the DiskPage structure. Is this possible in c# – or is there another preferred approach? Should I just leave that code in C and link it in?

Thanks!
Reza

Answer 1

I suggest you read Mastering C# structs that discusses using marshaling (Marshal.Copy in particular) for that purpose.