c# Equivalent to VB6's 'StrConv'

Question

I want to convert a string into a byte array. (Yes) I have seen multiple questions already asked on this topic, but I did not find the answers to be too helpful. In most cases the questions were rather lacking. I've been doing some research, and I will post my findings below.

These are all ways I found to convert a string into a byte array in C#.net. Many of these were coded on my own.

1)

private byte[] getByte(string s)
          {
                 Byte[] b = new byte[s.Length];

                 for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++)
                 {
                       char c = Convert.ToChar(s.Substring(i, 1));
                       b[i] = Convert.ToByte(c);
                 }
                 return b;
          }

2)

System.Text.ASCIIEncoding  encoding=new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();
        Byte[] bytes = encoding.GetBytes(yourString)

3) ** Of course there is the file.ReadAllBytes method, but I am not reading this data from a file.

So, does anyone here know of a C# equivalent to the following (which is VB6)?

Dim sData as string
Dim b() as byte
sData = "Test String in VB6"
b() = strconv(sData, VbFromUnicode)

Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing some great answers!

Answer 1

System.Text.UTF8Encoding  encoding=new System.Text.UTF8Encoding();
return encoding.GetBytes(str);

Answer 2

Your option 2 is almost there, you just need to change the encoder

System.Text.UTF8Encoding UTF8 = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding();
byte[] unicodeStringAsBytes = UTF8.GetBytes(myString);