Creating a byte array from a stream

Question

What is the prefered method for creating a byte array from an input stream?

Here is my current solution with .NET 3.5.

Stream s;
byte[] b;

using (         


        

Answer 1

You can use this extension method.

public static class StreamExtensions
{
    public static byte[] ToByteArray(this Stream stream)
    {
        var bytes = new List();

        int b;
        while ((b = stream.ReadByte()) != -1)
            bytes.Add((byte)b);

        return bytes.ToArray();
    }
}