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Asked: 2026-05-24T03:27:51+00:00

I am using a c# struct as a pseudo-union (by using the LayoutKind.Explicit attribute),

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I am using a c# struct as a pseudo-union (by using the LayoutKind.Explicit attribute), to pass network messages around my program. I understand how to use the layout with the primitive types, as they are of a know size.

However, how would I do this with one of the fields being a char array? I know a char is 2 bytes of data (when in unicode format), but how big is char[]? Am I correct in believing that this is a reference type, so its size is not just number of items * 2?

How would I layout the struct for this? Is it even possible?

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  1. Editorial Team

    The size is the width of a reference; so 4 bytes on x86 or 8 bytes on x64. The size of the array is irrelevant, as the array is stored separately on the heap. If you want to serialize that data to a byte stream, then it probably depends on which encoding you use for the char data. UTF16 would indeed be 2 * number of characters, but UTF8 or UTF32 will be different.

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