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Good way to convert between short and bytes?

Asked 2009-09-18T04:23:03.083
11

I need to take pairs of bytes in, and output shorts, and take shorts in and output pairs of bytes. Here are the functions i've devised for such a purpose:

static short ToShort(short byte1, short byte2)
{
    short number = (short)byte2;
    number <<= 4;
    number += (short)byte1;
    return number;
}
static void FromShort(short number, out byte byte1, out byte byte2)
{
    byte byte2 = (byte)(number >> 4);
    short tempByte = (short)byte2 << 4;
    byte byte1 = (byte)(number - tempByte);
}

I think this is correct but i'm not sure. If this isn't the right way to do it, what is? is there a way to do this already in the framework?

c# .net byte short
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1 Answer

6

If you want to take bytes... take bytes; and your shifts are off, and | would be more intuitive:

static short ToShort(byte byte1, byte byte2)
{   // using Int32 because that is what all the operations return anyway...
    return (short)((((int)byte1) << 8) | (int)byte2);
}
static void FromShort(short number, out byte byte1, out byte byte2)
{
    byte1 = (byte)(number >> 8); // to treat as same byte 1 from above
    byte2 = (byte)number;
}
answered 2009-09-18T04:35:47.817

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