Converting String to Byte Array in C#

If you already have a byte array then you will need to know what type of encoding was used to make it into that byte array.

For example, if the byte array was created like this:

byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(someString);

You will need to turn it back into a string like this:

string someString = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes);

If you can find in the code you inherited, the encoding used to create the byte array then you should be set.

First of all, add the System.Text namespace

using System.Text;

Then use this code

string input = "some text"; 
byte[] array = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(input);

Hope to fix it!

Encoding.Default should not be used...

Some answers use Encoding.Default, however Microsoft raises a warning against it:

Different computers can use different encodings as the default, and the default encoding can change on a single computer. If you use the Default encoding to encode and decode data streamed between computers or retrieved at different times on the same computer, it may translate that data incorrectly. In addition, the encoding returned by the Default property uses best-fit fallback [i.e. the encoding is totally screwed up, so you can't reencode it back] to map unsupported characters to characters supported by the code page. For these reasons, using the default encoding is not recommended. To ensure that encoded bytes are decoded properly, you should use a Unicode encoding, such as UTF8Encoding or UnicodeEncoding. You could also use a higher-level protocol to ensure that the same format is used for encoding and decoding.

To check what the default encoding is, use Encoding.Default.WindowsCodePage (1250 in my case - and sadly, there is no predefined class of CP1250 encoding, but the object could be retrieved as Encoding.GetEncoding(1250)).