Why reading my tcp inputstream lead a byte array fill in with null character only?

I am not used to C# (I do C++ usually) and try to debug an application that is not mine, at all.

My application tries to read a big line from a TCP socket. Let say around 140 000 characters. And it fails. Let me explain how.

My code is here (inside a loop actually )

            System.IO.Stream inputStream;

            //...

            // Loop code:
            buffer            = new byte[2];
            readByteForLength = inputStream.Read(buffer, 0, 2);

It turns out that Read() may fill in the buffer array correctly up to a point, where it fills it with NULL characters instead of valid values. And it returns 2 as it would in a correct case.

Do you have an idea why such NULL characters?

Is the tcp pacquet still on the network when I try to read more of my data? Is there a limit for inputStream before it behaves wrongly ?

Update: By the way doing so lead to the same kind of issue:

        System.IO.StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(inputStream);
        string s = sr.ReadToEnd();

        File.WriteAllText(@"c:\temp\toto.txt", s);

Actually the toto file stops exactly where I encounter an issue in the first version of my code while it is a little bit longer because the rest of the line is then filled up with NULL characters, n开发者_高级运维early up to 400 000!

The only thing reasonable idea is that you indeed do have zeroes in the incoming data.

Try sniffering on the communication with ethereal.

By the way: allocating RAM for every received data piece may be a wrong practice.