Question

So here’s the deal: I’m trying to open a file (from bytes), convert it to a string so I can mess with some metadata in the header, convert it back to bytes, and save it. The problem I’m running into right now is with this code. When I compare the string that’s been converted back and forth (but not otherwise modified) to the original byte array, it’s unequal. How can I make this work?

public static byte[] StringToByteArray(string str)
{
    UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
    return encoding.GetBytes(str);
}

public string ByteArrayToString(byte[] input)
{
    UTF8Encoding enc = new UTF8Encoding();
    string str = enc.GetString(input);
    return str;
}

Here’s how I’m comparing them.

byte[] fileData = GetBinaryData(filesindir[0], Convert.ToInt32(fi.Length));
string fileDataString = ByteArrayToString(fileData);
byte[] recapturedBytes = StringToByteArray(fileDataString);
Response.Write((fileData == recapturedBytes));

I’m sure it’s UTF-8, using:

StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(filesindir[0]);
Response.Write(sr.CurrentEncoding);

which returns “System.Text.UTF8Encoding”.

Answer 1

Try the static functions on the Encoding class that provides you with instances of the various encodings. You shouldn’t need to instantiate the Encoding just to convert to/from a byte array. How are you comparing the strings in code?

Edit

You’re comparing arrays, not strings. They’re unequal because they refer to two different arrays; using the == operator will only compare their references, not their values. You’ll need to inspect each element of the array in order to determine if they are equivalent.

public bool CompareByteArrays(byte[] lValue, byte[] rValue)
{
    if(lValue == rValue) return true; // referentially equal
    if(lValue == null || rValue == null) return false; // one is null, the other is not
    if(lValue.Length != rValue.Length) return false; // different lengths

    for(int i = 0; i < lValue.Length; i++)
    {
        if(lValue[i] != rValue[i]) return false;
    }

    return true;
}