Question

I have the following method:

private byte[] GetEmailAsBytes(string lstrBody)
{
   byte[] lbytBody;
   ASCIIEncoding lASCIIEncoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
   lbytBody = lASCIIEncoding.GetBytes(lstrBody);
   return lbytBody;
}

I was wondering if this could be converted to a lambda expression. Im new to this. I have tried:

Func<string> BodyToBytes = x => {
        ASCIIEncoding lASCIIEncoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
        return lASCIIEncoding.GetBytes(x);
}

but this does not compile. Simply i wish to convert a string to a series of bytes, and for interest sake would like to do this using lambda expressions.

Answer 1

The expression Func<string> is equivalent to a function which accepts no arguments and returns a string.

Your example clearly returns a byte[], but you want it to accept a string and return a byte[].

To solve this, change BodyToBytes to match the following. Note that the type of the arguments come first, comma delimited, followed by the return type. In this case, x will be of type string.

Func<string, byte[]> BodyToBytes = x => {
        ASCIIEncoding lASCIIEncoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
        return lASCIIEncoding.GetBytes(x);
}

For a reference, see Func Type or the MSDN docs.