How to cast binary resource to short array?

I need to process a binary resource (contents of a binary file). The file contains shorts. I can't figure how to cast the result of accessing that resource to a short array though:

short[] indexTable = Properties.Resources.IndexTable;

doesn't work; I can only use

byte[] indexTable = Properties.Resources.IndexTable;

Using Array.Copy wouldn't work since it would convert each byte from the array returned by accessing the resource to a short.

How do I solve this problem please (other than manually converting the byte array)? Is there a way to tell C# that the resource is of type short[] rather than byte[]?

I had even trie开发者_C百科d to edit the project's resx file and change the resources' data types to System.UInt16, but then I got the error message that now constructor could be found for them.

Using VS 2010 Express and .NET 4.0.

You should use BinaryReader:

using (var reader = new BinaryReader(new MemoryStream(Properties.Resources.IndexTable)))
{
    var firstValue = reader.ReadInt16();
    ...
}

Buffer.BlockCopy()

byte[] srcTable = Properties.Resources.IndexTable;
short[] destTable = new short[srcTable.Length / 2];
Buffer.BlockCopy(srcTable, 0, destTable, 0, srcTable.Length);

Here's how if you prefer a 'Do it yourself' style (however, I personally prefer @Joel Rondeau's method)

byte[] bytes = Properties.Resources.IndexTable;
short[] shorts = new short[bytes.Length/2];

for( int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i += 2 )
{
    // the order of these depends on your endianess
    // big
    shorts[i/2] = (short)(( bytes[i] << 8 ) | (bytes[i+1] )); 
    // little
    // shorts[i/2] = (short)(( bytes[i+1] << 8 ) | (bytes[i] )); 
}