MemoryStream: why convert to byte after readByte

Question

In this example from MS, you\'ll notice that after we read a byte from memory stream, it goes into an int which must then be converted to byte. It stikes me as strange that

Answer 1

This is not specific to Memory stream, rather it is because of the design of base class "Stream" and the reason for that is

Return value:

The unsigned byte cast to an Int32, or -1 if at the end of the stream.

-1 cannot be represented using unsigned byte