Question

I’m looking for a way to reinterpret an array of type byte[] as a different type, say short[]. In C++ this would be achieved by a simple cast but in C# I haven’t found a way to achieve this without resorting to duplicating the entire buffer.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can achieve this but this is a relatively bad idea. Raw memory access like this is not type-safe and can only be done under a full trust security environment. You should never do this in a properly designed managed application. If your data is masquerading under two different forms, perhaps you actually have two separate data sets?

In any case, here is a quick and simple code snippet to accomplish what you asked:

byte[] bytes = new byte[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 }; int byteCount = bytes.Length;  unsafe {     // By using the fixed keyword, we fix the array in a static memory location.     // Otherwise, the garbage collector might move it while we are still using it!     fixed (byte* bytePointer = bytes)     {         short* shortPointer = (short*)bytePointer;          for (int index = 0; index < byteCount / 2; index++)         {             Console.WriteLine('Short {0}: {1}', index, shortPointer[index]);         }     } }