Is there an equivalent in C# to pack and unpack from Perl?

Question

Is there some library who permit to do the same as pack and unpack Perl function?

With a template list as http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/pack.html,

pack is for converting a list into a binary representation
unpack is for converting binary structure into normal Perl variables

To be brief:

I give a byte[] array, a template to parse the packet, and variable that will receive extracted data.

It seems Mono is providing such a feature, but templates are not the same, see http://www.mono-project.com/Mono_DataConvert#Obtaining_Mono.DataConvert.

Answer 1

It seems that what you want to know about is Binary Serialization. From the link;

Serialization can be defined as the process of storing the state of an object to a storage medium. During this process, the public and private fields of the object and the name of the class, including the assembly containing the class, are converted to a stream of bytes, which is then written to a data stream. When the object is subsequently deserialized, an exact clone of the original object is created.

A more concrete example of Binary Serialization for C# (targeting .NET Framework 4.5) can be found here. Brief synopsis; you must annotate the class you wish to serialize and deserialize with a [Serializable] tag, and then use a Formatter instance to actually do the serialization/deserialization.

So in Perl where you can simply say:

pack TEMPLATE,LIST

In C# you'll need the following:

[Serializable]
public class MyObject {
  public int n1 = 0;
  public int n2 = 0;
  public String str = null;
}

// ... And in some other class where you have you application logic

public void pack()
{

    MyObject obj = new MyObject();
    obj.n1 = 1;
    obj.n2 = 24;
    obj.str = "Some String";
    IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
    Stream stream = new FileStream("MyFile.bin", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None);
    formatter.Serialize(stream, obj);
    stream.Close();
}

---

To address the idea that you are going to want to control the serialization template, you'll likely need to implement ISerializable yourself. Here's a MSDN article about custom binary serialization. By implementing the interface yourself, you gain a very high amount of control of the binary template in exchange for a high amount of complexity in ensuring functionality.

Answer 2

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.bitconverter.tosingle%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

The above link shows the methods that are more directly equivalent to pack and unpack.