sending strings like : "\x01" to web service

[Stephen Ahn]

Given a web method like this :

[WebMethod]
public string DoEcho(string data)
{
return "echoed <" + data + ">";
}

When this method is called from the client, eg :

string res = service1.DoEcho("\x01");

you get a : System.Xml.XmlException, with message like :

"hexadecimal value 0x01, is an invalid character."

I understand this by design, since chars like 0x01
are not valid XML chars, according to docs like :

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#NT-Char

However, just say I still really need to send these sort
of strings around. One possibility is to convert the string
to a byte array, then send as byte array (base64
encoded string by dotent). However, this
seems inefficient.

Has anyone else had this requirement, and found a
good workaround ?

TIA,
Stephen