Write float array into a binary file c#

Question

I have a float array :

float[] samples32array

I need to convert it into a binary file so I can read it in matlab.

Is there any way to do that?

Answer 1

It's simple. First, you should use FileStream and create a file. Then, you can use BinaryWriter, which can write any C# datatype into an underlaying stream, such as a FileStream.

using (FileStream file = File.Create(path))
{
    using (BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(file))
    {
        foreach (float value in samples32array)
        {
            writer.Write(value);
        }
    }
}

Since the constructor of BinaryWriter accepts the basic type Stream, any stream type can be used. It works for file streams as well as NetworkStream or a MemoryStream etc. It's a very generic class.

And please avoid converting the float[] into a byte[] beforehand as it will allocate memory and this is bad if your array is big (don't know if that's the case for you).