Equivalent in C# of Python's “struct.pack/unpack”?

Question

I am a seasoned Python developer and have come to love a lot of its conveniences. I have actually known C# for some time but recently have gotten into some more advanced cod

Answer 1

.NET (and thus, C#) has the Marshal.StructureToPtr and Marshal.PtrToStructure methods.

You can abuse these to cast raw memory to a struct like you would in C, not that I'd recommend doing it this way (as it isn't exactly portable). You also need to get your Byte[] array buffer into the native heap in order to perform the operation on it:

T FromBuffer(Byte[] buffer) where T : struct {

    T temp = new T();
    int size = Marshal.SizeOf(temp);
    IntPtr ptr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(size);

    Marshal.Copy(buffer, 0, ptr, size);

    T ret = (T)Marshal.PtrToStructure(ptr, temp.GetType());
    Marshal.FreeHGlobal(ptr);

    return ret;
}