Question

OK so I have converted a file into a binary format using BinaryWriter. The format is:

number of ints, followed by the ints.

So the code will be something like:

readLineOfNumbers() {
    count = read();
    int[] a = read(count ints);
    return a;
}

Do I use a BinaryReader? The closest thing I can see there is to read everything into a byte[], but then how do I make that an int array? This all has to be done very efficiently as well. I need buffering and so on.

Answer 1

I don’t know of anything within BinaryReader which will read an array of integers, I’m afraid. If you read into a byte array you could then use Buffer.BlockCopy to copy those bytes into an int[], which is probably the fastest form of conversion – although it relies on the endianness of your processor being appropriate for your data.

Have you tried just looping round, calling BinaryReader.ReadInt32() as many times as you need to, and letting the file system do the buffering? You could always add a BufferedStream with a large buffer into the mix if you thought that would help.