What type is System.Byte[*]

Question

I'm being passed an object that returns "System.Byte[*]" when converted to string. This apparently isn't a standard one dimensional array of Byte objects ("System.Byte[]"), so what is it?

Answer 1

That's probably a single-dimensional array with a non-zero base.

Here's an example of how to create one:

using System;

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        Array nonZeroBase = Array.CreateInstance
           (typeof(byte), new int[]{1}, new int[]{2});
        Console.WriteLine(nonZeroBase); // Prints byte[*]
    }
}

In CLR terminology this is called an array (rectangular arrays are also arrays) where single-dimensional, zero-based arrays are called vectors. (A multi-dimensional array would be printed as byte[,] though.)

You may be interested in this blog post which Marc Gravell posted just morning...