Converting a byte[] to a System.String

Raymond Chen

For some reason, this question gets asked a lot. How do I convert a byte[] to a System.String? (Yes, this is a CLR question. Sorry.)

You can use String System.Text.UnicodeEncoding.GetString() which takes a byte[] array and produces a string.

Note that this is not the same as just blindly copying the bytes from the byte[] array into a hunk of memory and calling it a string. The GetString() method must validate the bytes and forbid invalid surrogates, for example.

You might be tempted to create a string and just mash the bytes into it, but that violates string immutability and can lead to subtle problems.

Raymond Chen

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