Question

Say I have a byte array with 100,000 bytes in it. I want to convert each byte into its textual representation of itself. For example:

byte[] b = new byte[55000];

for(int i = 0; i < b.Length; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(ConvertToString(b[i]));
}

The above code takes around 35 seconds to complete, is there some way I could cut that down to around 5 seconds?

Answer 1

As mentioned in my comment I would suggest removing the Console.WriteLine() method. I would also suggest that it be avoided in loops. Typically if you want to see what is being processed you would use either the Debug.WriteLine() (MSDN) or set a breakpoint (even a conditional breakpoint if you have a specific case that isn’t working right). If you need to return the data then again i would suggest using a string builder:

byte[] b = new byte[55000];
StringBuilder myStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

for(int i = 0; i < b.Length; i++)
{
    myStringBuilder.AppendLine(ConvertToString(b[i]));
}
Console.Write(myStringBuilder.ToString());