Question

In C#, if I was to read in “3 32-bit floating point numbers” as a byte[] from a binary file Stream, how would I extract the 3 decimals? Looking for the code to read the data and then extract the 3 decimals. Assume the file only contains the “3 32-bit floating point numbers”.

Answer 1

Use BitConvert.ToSingle:

// numbers to read
var count = 3; 

// read file bytes into a buffer
var buffer = new byte[sizeof(float) * count];
var stream = File.OpenRead("path/to/file");
stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
stream.Dispose();

var numbers = Enumerable
        .Range(0, count)
        // read 32 bits from buffer and convert to float
        .Select(index => BitConverter.ToSingle(buffer, index * sizeof(float)))
        .ToArray();