Reliable way to convert a file to a byte[]

Question

I found the following code on the web:

private byte [] StreamFile(string filename) {    FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open,FileAccess.Read);     // Create a byte array of file stream length    byte[] ImageData = new byte[fs.Length];     //Read block of bytes from stream into the byte array    fs.Read(ImageData,0,System.Convert.ToInt32(fs.Length));     //Close the File Stream    fs.Close();    return ImageData; //return the byte data } 

Is it reliable enough to use to convert a file to byte[] in c#, or is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

byte[] bytes = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(filename); 

That should do the trick. ReadAllBytes opens the file, reads its contents into a new byte array, then closes it. Here's the MSDN page for that method.

Answer 2

byte[] bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(filename)  

or ...

var bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(filename)