C# – Writing String to Stream and reading it back does not work

cstream

I want to write a String to a Stream (a MemoryStream in this case) and read the bytes one by one. 

stringAsStream = new MemoryStream();
UnicodeEncoding uniEncoding = new UnicodeEncoding();
String message = "Message";

stringAsStream.Write(uniEncoding.GetBytes(message), 0, message.Length);

Console.WriteLine("This:\t\t" + (char)uniEncoding.GetBytes(message)[0]);
Console.WriteLine("Differs from:\t" + (char)stringAsStream.ReadByte());

The (undesired) result I get is:

This:         M
Differs from: ?

It looks like it's not being read correctly, as the first char of "Message" is 'M', which works when getting the bytes from the UnicodeEncoding instance but not when reading them back from the stream.

What am I doing wrong?

The bigger picture: I have an algorithm which will work on the bytes of a Stream, I'd like to be as general as possible and work with any Stream. I'd like to convert an ASCII-String into a MemoryStream, or maybe use another method to be able to work on the String as a Stream. The algorithm in question will work on the bytes of the Stream.

Best Answer

After you write to the MemoryStream and before you read it back, you need to Seek back to the beginning of the MemoryStream so you're not reading from the end.

UPDATE

After seeing your update, I think there's a more reliable way to build the stream:

UnicodeEncoding uniEncoding = new UnicodeEncoding();
String message = "Message";

// You might not want to use the outer using statement that I have
// I wasn't sure how long you would need the MemoryStream object    
using(MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
    var sw = new StreamWriter(ms, uniEncoding);
    try
    {
        sw.Write(message);
        sw.Flush();//otherwise you are risking empty stream
        ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

        // Test and work with the stream here. 
        // If you need to start back at the beginning, be sure to Seek again.
    }
    finally
    {
        sw.Dispose();
    }
}

As you can see, this code uses a StreamWriter to write the entire string (with proper encoding) out to the MemoryStream. This takes the hassle out of ensuring the entire byte array for the string is written.

Update: I stepped into issue with empty stream several time. It's enough to call Flush right after you've finished writing.

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