I need to fill a byte[]
with a single non-zero value. How can I do this in C# without looping through each byte
in the array?
Update: The comments seem to have split this into two questions -
memset
I totally agree that using a simple loop works just fine, as Eric and others have pointed out. The point of the question was to see if I could learn something new about C# :) I think Juliet's method for a Parallel operation should be even faster than a simple loop.
Benchmarks: Thanks to Mikael Svenson: http://techmikael.blogspot.com/2009/12/filling-array-with-default-value.html
It turns out the simple for
loop is the way to go unless you want to use unsafe code.
Apologies for not being clearer in my original post. Eric and Mark are both correct in their comments; need to have more focused questions for sure. Thanks for everyone's suggestions and responses.
You could use Enumerable.Repeat
:
byte[] a = Enumerable.Repeat((byte)10, 100).ToArray();
The first parameter is the element you want repeated, and the second parameter is the number of times to repeat it.
This is OK for small arrays but you should use the looping method if you are dealing with very large arrays and performance is a concern.