What are the C# equivalent of these C++ structs

Question

typedef union _Value {
    signed char    c; 
    unsigned char  b; 
    signed short   s; 
    unsigned short w; 
    signed long    l; 
    unsigned long  u; 
             


        

Answer 1

Back in .Net 2.0 days i also had a network socket and to convert the byte stream into a meaningful structure. At this time there was the only solution to do it by hand with BitConverter and Buffer class.

Unfortunately i couldn't find the example on the web again. So i stripped down my old class (gosh, this looks so old and ugly...). Maybe due to strip down, there are some small typo errors within it, but it should give you a good idea on how to accomplish the problem.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace VehicleSpeedTracer
{
    public class Datagram
    {
        //Offsets im ByteArray
        private const int SizeOffset = 0;
        private const int TimeOffset = SizeOffset + sizeof(uint);
        private const int SpeedOffset = TimeOffset + sizeof(double);
        private const int UnitOffset = SpeedOffset + sizeof(char);
        private const int UnitMaxSize = (int)MaxSize - UnitOffset;

        //Daten Current
        public const uint MaxSize = 128;
        public TimeSpan CurrentTime;
        public double CurrentSpeed;
        public string Unit;

        public uint Size
        {
            get { return MaxSize - (uint)UnitMaxSize + (uint)Unit.Length; }
        }

        public Datagram()
        {
        }

        public Datagram(Datagram Data)
        {
            CurrentTime = Data.CurrentTime;
            CurrentSpeed = Data.CurrentSpeed;
            Unit = Data.Unit;
        }

        public Datagram(byte[] RawData)
        {
            CurrentTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(GetDouble(RawData, TimeOffset));
            CurrentSpeed = GetDouble(RawData, SpeedOffset);
            Unit = GetString(RawData, UnitOffset, (int)(GetUInt(RawData, SizeOffset) - UnitOffset));
        }

        public override string ToString()
        {
            return this.CurrentTime.Hours.ToString().PadLeft(2, '0') + ":" +
                    this.CurrentTime.Minutes.ToString().PadLeft(2, '0') + ":" +
                    this.CurrentTime.Seconds.ToString().PadLeft(2, '0') + "." +
                    this.CurrentTime.Milliseconds.ToString().PadLeft(3, '0') + "  " +
                    this.Unit;
        }

        public static implicit operator byte[](Datagram Data)
        {
            byte[] RawData;
            RawData = new byte[Data.Size];
            SetUInt(RawData, SizeOffset, Data.Size);
            SetDouble(RawData, TimeOffset, Data.CurrentTime.TotalDays);
            SetDouble(RawData, SpeedOffset, Data.CurrentSpeed);
            SetString(RawData, UnitOffset, Data.Unit);

            return RawData;
        }

        #region Utility Functions
        // utility:  get a uint from the byte array
        private static uint GetUInt(byte[] aData, int Offset)
        {
            return BitConverter.ToUInt32(aData, Offset);
        }

        // utility:  set a uint into the byte array
        private static void SetUInt(byte[] aData, int Offset, uint Value)
        {
            byte[] buint = BitConverter.GetBytes(Value);
            Buffer.BlockCopy(buint, 0, aData, Offset, buint.Length);
        }

        // utility:  get a ushort from the byte array
        private static ushort GetUShort(byte[] aData, int Offset)
        {
            return BitConverter.ToUInt16(aData, Offset);
        }

        // utility:  set a ushort into the byte array
        private static void SetUShort(byte[] aData, int Offset, int Value)
        {
            byte[] bushort = BitConverter.GetBytes((short)Value);
            Buffer.BlockCopy(bushort, 0, aData, Offset, bushort.Length);
        }

        // utility:  get a double from the byte array
        private static double GetDouble(byte[] aData, int Offset)
        {
            return BitConverter.ToDouble(aData, Offset);
        }

        // utility:  set a double into the byte array
        private static void SetDouble(byte[] aData, int Offset, double Value)
        {
            byte[] bushort = BitConverter.GetBytes(Value);
            Buffer.BlockCopy(bushort, 0, aData, Offset, bushort.Length);
        }

        // utility:  get a unicode string from the byte array
        private static string GetString(byte[] aData, int Offset, int Length)
        {
            String sReturn = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(aData, Offset, Length);
            return sReturn;
        }

        // utility:  set a unicode string in the byte array
        private static void SetString(byte[] aData, int Offset, string Value)
        {
            byte[] arr = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(Value);
            Buffer.BlockCopy(arr, 0, aData, Offset, arr.Length);
        }
        #endregion
    }

    public delegate void DatagramEventHandler(object sender, DatagramEventArgs e);

    public class DatagramEventArgs : EventArgs
    {
        public Datagram Data;

        public DatagramEventArgs(Datagram Data)
        {
            this.Data = Data;
        }
    }
}