Currently you are converting a char (which can be represented as a number) to its binary representation (this number is the ASCII number). But if you want to convert a string to binary, you should use an encoding. The encoding determines how the text is converted to binary.
For example:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string input = "This is an example text.";
Console.WriteLine(input);
string asBin = ToBinary(input);
Console.WriteLine(asBin);
string asText = ToText(asBin);
Console.WriteLine(asText);
}
static string ToBinary(string input, System.Text.Encoding encoding = null)
{
if (encoding == null)
encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
var builder = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
var bytes = encoding.GetBytes(input); // Convert the text to bytes using the encoding
foreach (var b in bytes)
builder.Append(Convert.ToString(b, 2).PadLeft(8, '0')); //Convert the byte to its binary representation
return builder.ToString();
}
static string ToText(string bytes, System.Text.Encoding encoding = null)
{
if (encoding == null)
encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
var byteCount = 8;
var byteArray = new byte[bytes.Length / 8]; // An array for the bytes
for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length / byteCount; i++)
{
var subBytes = bytes.Substring(i * byteCount, byteCount); // Get a subpart of 8 bits
var b = Convert.ToByte(subBytes.TrimStart('0'), 2); // Convert the subpart to a byte
byteArray[i] = b; // Add the byte to the array
}
return encoding.GetString(byteArray); // Convert the array to text using the right encoding.
}
Now if you want to use ASCII encoding, you can call the functions as follows:
Console.WriteLine(input);
string asBin = ToBinary(input, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
Console.WriteLine(asBin);
string asText = ToText(asBin, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
Console.WriteLine(asText);