How to: Convert Strings into an Array of Bytes in Visual Basic

This topic shows how to convert a string into an array of bytes.

Example

This example uses the GetBytes method of the Encoding.Unicode encoding class to convert a string into an array of bytes.

Private Function UnicodeStringToBytes(
    ByVal str As String) As Byte()

    Return System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(str)
End Function

You can choose from several encoding options to convert a string into a byte array:

Encoding.ASCII: Gets an encoding for the ASCII (7-bit) character set.
Encoding.BigEndianUnicode: Gets an encoding for the UTF-16 format using the big-endian byte order.
Encoding.Default: Gets an encoding for the system's current ANSI code page.
Encoding.Unicode: Gets an encoding for the UTF-16 format using the little-endian byte order.
Encoding.UTF32: Gets an encoding for the UTF-32 format using the little-endian byte order.
Encoding.UTF7: Gets an encoding for the UTF-7 format.
Encoding.UTF8: Gets an encoding for the UTF-8 format.