Reading Binary data in C #

This code is far from guaranteed to work. In particular, the FileStream might read only the first 10 bytes of the file in the buffer. The Read method is only guaranteed to block until some data are available (or the end of the sequence is reached), not until all the data available. That's where the return value (omitted in the above code) is vital. It is necessary to deal with cases that can not read all the data at once, and the loop until you read what you want. Here is a method you can use if you want to read a sequence in the whole matrix, not stopping until it is finished:

/// <param name="stream">The stream to read data from</param>
/// <param name="data">The array to read bytes into. The array
/// will be completely filled from the stream, so an appropriate
/// size must be given.</param>
public static void ReadWholeArray (Stream stream, byte[] data)
{
int offset=0;
int remaining = data.Length;
while (remaining > 0)
{
int read = stream.Read(data, offset, remaining);
if (read <= 0)
throw new EndOfStreamException
(String.Format("End of stream reached with {0} bytes left to read", remaining));
remaining -= read;
offset += read;
}
}

Sometimes you do not know the length of the stream in advance (for example, a current network) and only want to read the whole lot into a buffer. Here is a method to do just that:

// <summary>
/// Reads data from a stream until the end is reached. The
/// data is returned as a byte array. An IOException is
/// thrown if any of the underlying IO calls fail.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="stream">The stream to read data from</param>
public static byte[] ReadFully (Stream stream)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
while (true)
{
int read = stream.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
if (read <= 0)
return ms.ToArray();
ms.Write (buffer, 0, read);
}
}
}

While the above is simple, not very efficient, because you just copy the data in the final, and probably several times between them. Here is a code that works well if you know the expected length of the data to start. (Although you can use stream.Length is not compatible with all streams.)

/// <summary>
/// Reads data from a stream until the end is reached. The
/// data is returned as a byte array. An IOException is
/// thrown if any of the underlying IO calls fail.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="stream">The stream to read data from</param>
/// <param name="initialLength">The initial buffer length</param>
public static byte[] ReadFully (Stream stream, int initialLength)
{
// If we've been passed an unhelpful initial length, just
// use 32K.
if (initialLength < 1)
{
initialLength = 32768;
}
byte[] buffer = new byte[initialLength];
int read=0;
int chunk;
while ( (chunk = stream.Read(buffer, read, buffer.Length-read)) > 0)
{
read += chunk;
// If we've reached the end of our buffer, check to see if there's
// any more information
if (read == buffer.Length)
{
int nextByte = stream.ReadByte();
// End of stream? If so, we're done
if (nextByte==-1)
{
return buffer;
}
// Nope. Resize the buffer, put in the byte we've just
// read, and continue
byte[] newBuffer = new byte[buffer.Length*2];
Array.Copy(buffer, newBuffer, buffer.Length);
newBuffer[read]=(byte)nextByte;
buffer = newBuffer;
read++;
}
}
// Buffer is now too big. Shrink it.
byte[] ret = new byte[read];
Array.Copy(buffer, ret, read);
return ret;
}