Converting String to List of Bytes

Question

This has to be incredibly simple, but I must not be looking in the right place.

I'm receiving this string via a FTDI usb connection:

'UUU'

I would like to receive this as a byte array of

[85,85,85]

In Python, this I would convert a string to a byte array like this: [ord(c) for c in 'UUU']

I've looked around, but haven't figured this out. How do I do this in Visual Basic?

Answer 1

Use the Encoding class with the correct encoding.

C#:

// Assuming string is UTF8
Encoding utf8 = Encoding.UTF8Encoding();
byte[] bytes = utf8.GetBytes("UUU");

VB.NET:

Dim utf8 As Encoding = Encoding.UTF8Encoding()
Dim bytes As Byte() = utf8.GetBytes("UUU")

Answer 2

depends on what kind of encoding you want to use but for UTF8 this works, you could chane it to UTF16 if needed.

Dim strText As String = "UUU"
Dim encText As New System.Text.UTF8Encoding()
Dim btText() As Byte
btText = encText.GetBytes(strText)