Referencing a part of an array in C#

Question

I have got the array containing some data, say, a header and a real data. I need to pass the data contained in the array to a method, but I definitely want to avoid copying it to another array.

I thought of something like ArraySegment, but it seems not to work in my case (or maybe I'm wrong?).

So, how to pass a part of an array to a method, as it was an array itself?

Thank you for your replies!

Cheers

Answer 1

Skip and Take:

var subArray = array.Skip(5).Take(10);

Answer 2

If you want to stick to just basic arrays (ie int [] numbers), then the most efficient way is to have your functions take the offset/count directly.

There are lots of IO functions that do something similar:

readData(data, 0, 4);

string readData(byte [] buffer, int offset, int length)

The other option is to use IEnumberable< T > and use skip/take

readData(data.Skip(0).Take(4));

string readData(IEnumerable<byte> buffer)

It's important to remember that in c# you aren't dealing with pointers, you are dealing with objects.