Binary Serialization of Large ArrayList

[TJO]

I need a quick way to binary serialize an ArrayList of System.Drawing.Point
objects. There are a lot of point is this list so I am trying to avoid
iterating over them. I have tried the following but cannot find an easy way
to Deserialize the data. Can anyone suggest a better way?

Array ptArray = _allLines.ToArray(typeof(System.Drawing.Point));
System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();

BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();

formatter.Serialize(ms,ptArray);
return ms.GetBuffer();

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

TJO <[e-mail]> wrote:

I need a quick way to binary serialize an ArrayList of System.Drawing.Point
objects. There are a lot of point is this list so I am trying to avoid
iterating over them. I have tried the following but cannot find an easy way
to Deserialize the data. Can anyone suggest a better way?

Array ptArray = _allLines.ToArray(typeof(System.Drawing.Point));
Well that's creating a copy of the whole list to start with...
Iterating is likely to be much faster than that.
System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();

BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();

formatter.Serialize(ms,ptArray);

return ms.GetBuffer();

Rather than using GetBuffer, you should use ToArray - otherwise you'll
end up with it being 0-padded at the end. That may well be your current
problem.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[Philip Rieck]

This will serialize a point[] array pretty much just as you have into a
memory stream, then deserialize it back into a point array.

{
Point[] ptArray = { new Point(1,1), new Point (2,2), new Point(3,3)};
//Or Point[] ptArray = (Point[])_allLines.ToArray(typeof(Point))

System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();

formatter.Serialize(ms, ptArray);
ptArray = null;
//Deserialize:
ms.Seek(0, System.IO.SeekOrigin.Begin);
ptArray = (Point[])formatter.Deserialize(ms);
}

--
-Philip Rieck
http://philiprieck.com/blog/

-
"TJO" <[e-mail]> wrote in message
news:O5**************@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

I need a quick way to binary serialize an ArrayList of System.Drawing.Point
objects. There are a lot of point is this list so I am trying to avoid
iterating over them. I have tried the following but cannot find an easy
way
to Deserialize the data. Can anyone suggest a better way?

Array ptArray = _allLines.ToArray(typeof(System.Drawing.Point));
System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();

BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();

formatter.Serialize(ms,ptArray);
return ms.GetBuffer();