Question

I have an api call which needs to get a byte[] as parameter and my data already is in a byte[]. The problem is that I want to send this buffer in little chunks.

The slow solution would be to copy the array data to new arrays. But I don’t want to do this because copying is unnecessary. I just want a byte[]-pointer which i can move around in my buffer. Like in C or C++…

Here a sample in pseudo code:

ArrayOriginal = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... 100 }

ArrayFirstChunk = { 0, 1, 2 } (pointer to the first element in the Original Array)
ArraySecondChunk = { 3, 4, 5 } (pointer to the fourth element in the Original Array)
…

Is this possible? The data shall be available only one time in the memory.

thx

Answer 1

You don’t say whether you can change the API. I assume not, but if you can, there is always IEnumerable<byte> – so you return

myarray.Skip(4).Take(4); 

etc