Write bytes to file

Question

I have a hexadecimal string (e.g 0CFE9E69271557822FE715A8B3E564BE) and I want to write it to a file as bytes. For example,

Offset      0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7   8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15
00000000   0C FE 9E 69 27 15 57 82  2F E7 15 A8 B3 E5 64 BE   .þži'.W‚/ç.¨³åd¾

How can I accomplish this using .NET and C#?

Ludly

Possibly a duplicate of #311665 – Snobbery

@Steven: Only partial. Not the most important part. – Ludly

Possible duplicate of Can a Byte[] Array be written to a file in C#? (also maybe only a partial duplicate). – Blau

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, this should do the trick. You'll need add using System.IO at the top of your file if you don't already have it.

public bool ByteArrayToFile(string fileName, byte[] byteArray)
{
    try
    {
        using (var fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write))
        {
            fs.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
            return true;
        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Exception caught in process: {0}", ex);
        return false;
    }
}

Kairouan

Answer 2

The simplest way would be to convert your hexadecimal string to a byte array and use the File.WriteAllBytes method.

Using the StringToByteArray() method from this question, you'd do something like this:

string hexString = "0CFE9E69271557822FE715A8B3E564BE";

File.WriteAllBytes("output.dat", StringToByteArray(hexString));

---

The StringToByteArray method is included below:

public static byte[] StringToByteArray(string hex) {
    return Enumerable.Range(0, hex.Length)
                     .Where(x => x % 2 == 0)
                     .Select(x => Convert.ToByte(hex.Substring(x, 2), 16))
                     .ToArray();
}

Twain

Thx, this works fine. How can i append bytes to the same file ? (after the first 'string') – Ludly

@Robertico: You add a boolean value of true to the third parameter of WriteAllBytes. Have you discovered MSDN yet? This is the first google link when searching for WriteAllBytes append. – Kairouan

I received an error adding the boolean value 'No overload for method 'WriteAllBytes' takes '3' arguments'. MSDN describes: 'However, if you are adding data to a file using a loop, a BinaryWriter object can provide better performance because you only have to open and close the file once.' I'm using a loop. I use the example from @0A0D and changed 'FileMode.Create' to 'FileMode.Append'. – Ludly

Answer 3

Try this:

private byte[] Hex2Bin(string hex) 
{
 if ((hex == null) || (hex.Length < 1)) {
  return new byte[0];
 }
 int num = hex.Length / 2;
 byte[] buffer = new byte[num];
 num *= 2;
 for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) {
  int num3 = int.Parse(hex.Substring(i, 2), NumberStyles.HexNumber);
  buffer[i / 2] = (byte) num3;
  i++;
 }
 return buffer;
}

private string Bin2Hex(byte[] binary) 
{
 StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
 foreach(byte num in binary) {
  if (num > 15) {
   builder.AppendFormat("{0:X}", num);
  } else {
   builder.AppendFormat("0{0:X}", num); /////// 大于 15 就多加个 0
  }
 }
 return builder.ToString();
}

Morley

Thx, this also works fine. How can i append bytes to the same file ? (after the first 'string') – Ludly

Answer 4

You convert the hex string to a byte array.

public static byte[] StringToByteArray(string hex) {
return Enumerable.Range(0, hex.Length)
                 .Where(x => x % 2 == 0)
                 .Select(x => Convert.ToByte(hex.Substring(x, 2), 16))
                 .ToArray();
}

Credit: Jared Par

And then use WriteAllBytes to write to the file system.

Fabiolafabiolas

If you're referencing an existing Stack Overflow answer as the answer to this question, then it's a pretty safe bet that this is a duplicate question and should be flagged as such. – Fenestrated

In this case it only answered part of his question, so I felt it didn't need to be marked as a dupe. He'd only get halfway there with that knowledge. – Fabiolafabiolas

Answer 5

This example reads 6 bytes into a byte array and writes it to another byte array. It does an XOR operation with the bytes so that the result written to the file is the same as the original starting values. The file is always 6 bytes in size, since it writes at position 0.

using System;
using System.IO;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main()
        {
        byte[] b1 = { 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 };
        byte[] b2 = new byte[6];
        byte[] b3 = new byte[6];
        byte[] b4 = new byte[6];

        FileStream f1;
        f1 = new FileStream("test.txt", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write);

        // write the byte array into a new file
        f1.Write(b1, 0, 6);
        f1.Close();

        // read the byte array
        f1 = new FileStream("test.txt", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);

        f1.Read(b2, 0, 6);
        f1.Close();

        // make changes to the byte array
        for (int i = 1; i < b2.Length; i++)
        {
            b2[i] = (byte)(b2[i] ^ (byte)10); //xor 10
        }

        f1 = new FileStream("test.txt", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Write);
        // write the new byte array into the file
        f1.Write(b2, 0, 6);
        f1.Close();

        f1 = new FileStream("test.txt", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);

        // read the byte array
        f1.Read(b3, 0, 6);
        f1.Close();

        // make changes to the byte array
        for (int i = 1; i < b3.Length; i++)
        {
            b4[i] = (byte)(b3[i] ^ (byte)10); //xor 10
        }

        f1 = new FileStream("test.txt", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Write);

        // b4 will have the same values as b1
        f1.Write(b4, 0, 6);
        f1.Close();
        }
    }
}

Rondarondeau