Byte[], alternate null chars

Malcolm Smart

Hi I am passing data between SQL 2005 and a CLR stored procedure developed in C# via the Service Broker, which uses XML as its transport. It's posted here as the problem is more C# than SQL. The message is read in the C# stored procedure using an SQLDataReader. The value, a string, is retrieved from the reader as an array of bytes.

//the original string sent was "5129";

byte[] mystring = (byte[])myReader[2];

mystring is populated with the ascii values of each character in my string, but interspersed with nulls ( 0s ), the equivalent of

byte[] mybytes = {53,0,49,0,50,0,57,0};

I can't seem to encode this back to a string. I've tried straight ASCIIEncoding, going via UTF8 (google?) with the following :-

byte[] temp = { 53, 0, 49, 0, 50, 0 , 57 , 0};
byte[] buf = Encoding.Convert(Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"), Encoding.UTF8, temp);

//via utf8            
string attempt1 = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buf, 0, 8);

//straight from byte array
string attempt2 = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(temp);
//attempt1 & attempt2 both hold  : "5\01\02\09\0"

What am I missing? To cut a long story short I want to convert byte[] temp = { 53, 0, 49, 0, 50, 0 , 57 , 0}; to a string like "5129". I am currently hacking it with a Replace("\0" , "") which is really professional! Regards

Knowledge is hereditary, it will find its way up or down. - Luc Pattyn
so you answer don't be scared of failure The only failure is never to try Things You've Never Done - Passenger -2008

Bekjong

Don't know if I get the problem exactly, but this seems to work:

        byte\[\] data = { 53, 0, 49, 0, 50, 0, 57, 0 };
        byte\[\] filter\_data = Array.FindAll(data, new Predicate<byte>(delegate(byte b) { return b != 0; }));
        string s = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(filter\_data);

Standards are great! Everybody should have one!

Malcolm Smart

Thanks - it's similar to my Replace - get rid of the nulls and it works. I suppose I am asking if a byte[] encoded string should contain two bytes for each character? And I suppose I should actually go and try that myself!!

Knowledge is hereditary, it will find its way up or down. Luc Pattyn
and since what every time when i want to add button to this control one add two times posted in C# forum

Bekjong

Ah ok. In that case, unicode? This gets the right result...

byte[] data = { 53, 0, 49, 0, 50, 0, 57, 0 };
string s = Encoding.Unicode.GetString(data);

Standards are great! Everybody should have one!

Malcolm Smart

Bekjong wrote:

Ah ok. In that case, unicode? This gets the right result...

Yes it does. How embarrasingly simply was that? :-O Thank you.

Knowledge is hereditary, it will find its way up or down. Luc Pattyn
and since what every time when i want to add button to this control one add two times posted in C# forum

Bekjong

Glad to help. Not so emarrasing, I've spent most of my day looking for an off-by-one bug.

Standards are great! Everybody should have one!