Equivalent of StringBuilder for byte arrays

This is a simple one, and one that I thought would have been answered. I did try to find an answer on here, but didn't come up with anything - so apologies if there is something I have missed.

Anyway, is there an equivalent of StringBu开发者_高级运维ilder but for byte arrays?

I'm not bothered about all the different overloads of Append() - but I'd like to see Append(byte) and Append(byte[]).

Is there anything around or is it roll-your-own time?

Would MemoryStream work for you? The interface might not be quite as convenient, but it offers a simple way to append bytes, and when you are done you can get the contents as a byte[] by calling ToArray().

A more StringBuilder-like interface could probably be achieved by making an extension method.

Update
Extension methods could look like this:

public static class MemoryStreamExtensions
{
    public static void Append(this MemoryStream stream, byte value)
    {
        stream.Append(new[] { value });
    }

    public static void Append(this MemoryStream stream, byte[] values)
    {
        stream.Write(values, 0, values.Length);
    }
}

Usage:

MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
stream.Append(67);
stream.Append(new byte[] { 68, 69 });
byte[] data = stream.ToArray();  // gets an array with bytes 67, 68 and 69

The MemoryStream approach is good, but if you want to have StringBuilder-like behavior add a BinaryWriter. BinaryWriter provides all the Write overrides you could want.

MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(stream);
writer.Write((byte)67);
writer.Write(new byte[] { 68, 69 });

Probably List<byte>:

var byteList = new List<byte>();
byteList.Add(42);
byteList.AddRange(new byte[] { 1, 2, 3 });

List<byte> Then when you want it as an array you can call ToArray()

using System;
using System.IO;

public static class MemoryStreams
{
    public static MemoryStream Append(
        this MemoryStream stream
        , byte value
        , out bool done)
    {
        try
        {
            stream.WriteByte(value);
            done = true;
        }
        catch { done = false; }
        return stream;
    }

    public static MemoryStream Append(
        this MemoryStream stream
        , byte[] value
        , out bool done
        , uint offset = 0
        , Nullable<uint> count = null)
    {
        try
        {
            var rLenth = (uint)((value == null) ? 0 : value.Length);

            var rOffset = unchecked((int)(offset & 0x7FFFFFFF));

            var rCount = unchecked((int)((count ?? rLenth) & 0x7FFFFFFF));

            stream.Write(value, rOffset, rCount);
            done = true;
        }
        catch { done = false; }
        return stream;
    }
}

Look at this project at codeproject. It's just one class that implements the solution with a MemoryStream as suggested in other answers.