How do you convert a string to ascii to binary in C#?

Question

A while back (freshman year of high school) I asked a really good C++ programmer who was a junior to make a simple application to convert a string to binary. He gave me the

Answer 1

Here's an extension function:

        public static string ToBinary(this string data, bool formatBits = false)
        {
            char[] buffer = new char[(((data.Length * 8) + (formatBits ? (data.Length - 1) : 0)))];
            int index = 0;
            for (int i = 0; i < data.Length; i++)
            {
                string binary = Convert.ToString(data[i], 2).PadLeft(8, '0');
                for (int j = 0; j < 8; j++)
                {
                    buffer[index] = binary[j];
                    index++;
                }
                if (formatBits && i < (data.Length - 1))
                {
                    buffer[index] = ' ';
                    index++;
                }
            }
            return new string(buffer);
        }

You can use it like:

Console.WriteLine("Testing".ToBinary());

which outputs:

01010100011001010111001101110100011010010110111001100111

and if you add 'true' as a parameter, it will automatically separate each binary sequence.