Convert charArray to byteArray

Question

I have a string which under all circumstances satisfies ([a-zA-Z0-9])*, and I want to let it run through sha1.

So how do I convert the string (or the char array obtained using ToCharArray()) to a byte array?

All answers I found so far have a big bunch of comments why the conversion from string to byte array is evil, they provide links to character encoding tutorials, and include a bunch of character encodings bloating the code.

Under my circumstances, conversion should be a LINQ oneliner, safe and neat.

I tried:

sha.ComputeHash(validator.ToCharArray().ToArray<byte>())

and I played around as far as my LINQ knowledge goes:

sha.ComputeHash(validator.ToCharArray().ToArray<byte>(c => (byte)c))

Answer 1

validator.Select(c => (byte)c).ToArray()

Will also work. The "string" type supports "IEnumerable", so you can use LINQ directly with one.

The "Select" method allows you specify a lambda to customize your output. This replaces what you were trying to do with the "ToArray(c => (byte)c))".

Answer 2

Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8").GetBytes(chararray);