Question

I need to do the following things very often (endianness can be ignored here, I only use x86):

1. compare a given uint to a specific offset in a byte array (maybe I can compare all 4 bytes at once?)
2. copy 4 bytes from a byte array with offset to a uint
3. copy a uint to a specific offset in a byte array (it will overwrite 4 bytes in this array)
4. copy 12 bytes to a struct: (uint, uint, byte, byte,byte, byte)

The last one is not so often used. But it would be very interesting if I could do it with just some unsafe operations.

What is the fastest way to do it? The first is the most important as I do it the most and is uses the most CPU time. Unsafe code is possible (if it is faster).

EDIT:

Currenlty I am using something like this to copy an uint into a byte array:

 public static void Copy(uint i, byte[] arr, int offset)
    {
        var v = BitConverter.GetBytes(i);
        arr[offset] = v[0];
        arr[offset + 1] = v[0 + 1];
        arr[offset + 2] = v[0 + 2];
        arr[offset + 3] = v[0 + 3];
    }

For the back conversion I use this:

BitConverter.ToUInt32(arr, offset)

The last one is so less code, the first one so much, maybe there is optimization.
For comparison, currently I convert it back (the second one) and then I compare the uint with the value I want to compare:

BitConverter.ToUInt32(arr, offset) == myVal

For the fourth Part (extracting a struct) I am using something like this:

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit, Size = 12)]
    public struct Bucket
    {
        [FieldOffset(0)]
        public uint int1;
        [FieldOffset(4)]
        public uint int2;
        [FieldOffset(8)]
        public byte byte1;
        [FieldOffset(9)]
        public byte byte2;
        [FieldOffset(10)]
        public byte byte3;
        [FieldOffset(11)]
        public byte byte4;
    }

    public static Bucket ExtractValuesToStruct(byte[] arr, int offset)
    {
        var b = new Bucket();
        b.int1 = BitConverter.ToUInt32(arr, offset);
        b.int2 = BitConverter.ToUInt32(arr, offset + 4);
        b.byte1 = arr[offset + 8];
        b.byte2 = arr[offset + 9];
        b.byte3 = arr[offset + 10];
        b.byte4 = arr[offset + 11];
        return b;
    }

I think using unsafe code I should be able to copy the 12 bytes at once.

Answer 1

Copy a uint to a specific offset in a byte array

  unsafe public static void UnsafeCopy(uint i, byte[] arr, int offset)
  {
    fixed (byte* p = arr)
    {
      *((uint*)(p + offset)) = i;
    }
  }
  public static void ShiftCopy(uint i, byte[] arr, int offset)
  {
    arr[offset] = (byte)(i & 0xFF);
    arr[offset + 1] = (byte)((i >> 8) & 0xFF);
    arr[offset + 2] = (byte)((i >> 16) & 0xFF);
    arr[offset + 3] = (byte)((i >> 24) & 0xFF);
  } 

Statistic (1 000 000 calls)

00:00:00.0414024: copy. get bytes
00:00:00.0136741: unsafe copy
00:00:00.0154764: shift  copy