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ASCII to binary

ASCII to binary

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PsychoCoder

16 Jul, 2008 - 05:38 PM

Post #1

using DIC.Core;

Joined: 26 Jul, 2007
Posts: 7,831

Windows

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Expert In: VB, VB.Net, C#, SQL, ASP, ASP.Net, Web Development, HTML, CSS, Win32 API, Javascript, mySQL, J#, GDI, Boo.Net

My Contributions

Well I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing here. I'm attempting to convert an ASCII string to its binary equivilent, but Im not quite getting the right results (it's always just a bit or two off), in fact sometimes it almost looks backwards

csharp


public string ToBinary(string str)
{
    string converted = string.Empty;
    byte[] byteArray = GetByteArray(str);

   //create a memory stream
    MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();

    //create BinaryWriter based on our MemoryStream
    BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(stream);

    //convert to binary
    try
    {
        writer.Write(byteArray);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        return ex.Message;
    }

    
    BitArray bitArray = new BitArray(stream.ToArray());

    for (int i = 0; i < bitArray.Length; i++)
    {
        if (bitArray[i])
        {
            converted += 1;
        }
        else
        {
            converted += 0;
        }
    }
    return converted;
}

GetByteArray is a simple one line method

csharp


private byte[] GetByteArray(string str)
{
    return Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(str);
}

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born2c0de	17 Jul, 2008 - 01:56 AM Post #2
printf("I'm a %XR",195936478); Joined: 26 Nov, 2004 Posts: 3,812 Thanked 27 times Dream Kudos: 2800 Expert In: 80x86 Assembly, C/C++, VB6, VB.NET, C#, J2SE, Win32 API, Reversing My Contributions	QUOTE in fact sometimes it almost looks backwards In fact it's always backwards. The conversion is perfect (bit-to-bit) As far as the reversing goes, you are storing it in reverse order. In the BitArray Class the lowest index value (i.e zero) refers to the least significant bit of the number stored. Let us assume that the number 32 is stored in a BitArray object. So when storing 32 (00000100), index 2 will refer to 1 and not 0. You are reading from 0 to bitarray.Length (i.e. from LSB to MSB) and concatenating each element in a string, which in turn reverses the result. Hence the final string is stored like this: [LSB], [LSB+1], [LSB+2], ..., [MSB] Iterate from MSB to LSB and problem solved!
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baavgai	17 Jul, 2008 - 04:43 AM Post #3
Dreaming Coder Joined: 16 Oct, 2007 Posts: 1,763 Thanked 70 times Dream Kudos: 400 Expert In: C, C++, Java, C#, ASP.NET, PHP, Perl, Python, Oracle, SQL Server, MySql, HTML, JavaScript, Lua My Contributions	As stated, it's always backwards. Or forwards, depending on how you look at it. If you think about it, we read decimal numbers backwards so often we don't even think about it. e.g. the number 456 is 4100 + 510 + 6*1. In order to decipher normal numbers, we have to mentally take in the whole thing first before we can recon it's size. How much more efficient if the first digit was the ones place... Like, well, a computer. Here's some code: csharp string ByteToBitStringNaturalOrder(byte value) { string s = ""; for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) { s += (value & 1); value >>= 1; } return s; } // ByteToBitStringNaturalOrder(5) yeilds 10100000, "backwards" string ByteToBitString(byte value) { string s = ""; for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) { s += (value & 0x80)>0 ? "1" : "0"; value <<= 1; } return s; } //ByteToBitString(5) yeilds 00000101 There are a number of ways to get it in the order you want, but with only eight bits, I like the one I used. For completelness, here's how I'd do an array: csharp string ByteToBitString(byte[] values) { string s = ""; for(int i=values.Length-1; i>=0; i--) { s += ByteToBitString(values[i]); } return s; } I'm actually writing an arbitrary size number class in C++ right now so all the bit manip stuff is pretty fresh in the brain. Hope this helps and that I didn't ruin the fun of doing it yourself.
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PsychoCoder

17 Jul, 2008 - 02:09 PM

Post #4

using DIC.Core;

Joined: 26 Jul, 2007
Posts: 7,831

Windows

Thanked 80 times

Dream Kudos: 8050

Expert In: VB, VB.Net, C#, SQL, ASP, ASP.Net, Web Development, HTML, CSS, Win32 API, Javascript, mySQL, J#, GDI, Boo.Net

My Contributions

Thanks, works perfectly now! This is the final code:

csharp


public string ToBinary(string str)
{
    string converted = string.Empty;
    byte[] byteArray = GetByteArray(str);

   //create a memory stream
    MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();

    //create BinaryWriter based on our MemoryStream
    BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(stream);

    //convert to binary
    try
    {
        writer.Write(byteArray);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        return ex.Message;
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < byteArray.Length; i++)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < 8; j++)
        {
            converted += (byteArray[i] & 0x80) > 0 ? "1" : "0";
            byteArray[i] <<= 1;
        }
    }

    return converted;
}