Question

I have a method that turns a byte array into an integer

public int Encode(string input)
{
    var bytes = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(input.ToLowerInvariant());
    return BitConverter.ToInt64(bytes,0);
}

Why is this integer not different for any input string?

For example

input = "http://www.google.com => 31525695615402088

and

input = "http://www.microsoft.com => 31525695615402088

Answer 1

Because 64 bits is 8 bytes, and so ToInt64 consumes only the first 8 bytes of the input array. What are the first eight bytes of the strings you’ve used?

And, as alexm notes, Encoding.Unicode specifies UTF-16, in which each character is actually two bytes (usually), so only the first 4 characters count.