Convert a byte array to a string in C#

This post will discuss how to convert a byte array to a string in C#.

1. Using `Encoding.GetString()` method

To decode all bytes in the byte array into a string, use the Encoding.GetString() method. Several decoding schemes are available in Encoding class – UTF8, Unicode, UTF32, ASCII, etc.

using System;

using System.Text;

public class Example

{

public static void Main()

{

byte[] bytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes("ABC123");

Console.WriteLine("Byte Array is: " + String.Join(" ", bytes));

string str = Encoding.Default.GetString(bytes);

Console.WriteLine("The String is: " + str);

}

Output:

Byte Array is: 65 66 67 49 50 51

The String is: ABC123

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2. Using `Convert.ToBase64String()` method

To decode the bytes encoded with base-64 digits, use the Convert.ToBase64String() method. This is demonstrated below:

using System;

public class Example

{

public static void Main()

{

byte[] bytes = Convert.FromBase64String("QUJDMTIz");

Console.WriteLine("Byte Array is: " + String.Join(" ", bytes));

string str = Convert.ToBase64String(bytes);

Console.WriteLine("The String is: " + str);

}

Output:

Byte Array is: 65 66 67 49 50 51

The String is: QUJDMTIz

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3. Using `MemoryStream` Class

Here, the idea is to create the byte stream from a specified byte array. Then read all characters from the byte stream and return the stream as a string.

The following code example shows how to implement this. The solution automatically tries to determine the encoding used using the byte order mark (BOM) in the byte stream. If not found, UTF-8 encoding is assumed.

using System;

using System.Text;

using System.IO;

public class Example

{

static string BytesToString(byte[] bytes)

{

using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(bytes))

{

using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(stream)) {

return streamReader.ReadToEnd();

}

public static void Main()

{

byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("ABC123");

Console.WriteLine("Byte Array is: " + String.Join(" ", bytes));

string str = BytesToString(bytes);

Console.WriteLine("The String is: " + str);

}

Output:

Byte Array is: 65 66 67 49 50 51

The String is: ABC123

Download Run Code

That’s all about converting a byte array to a string in C#.

Convert a byte array to a string in C#

1. Using Encoding.GetString() method

2. Using Convert.ToBase64String() method

3. Using MemoryStream Class

Share this:

1. Using `Encoding.GetString()` method

2. Using `Convert.ToBase64String()` method

3. Using `MemoryStream` Class