string - sprintf in C#?

Question

Is there something similar to sprintf() in C#?

I would for instance like to convert an integer to a 2-byte byte-array.

Something like:

int number = 17;
byte[] s = sprintf("%2c", number);

Answer 1

string s = string.Format("{0:00}", number)

The first 0 means "the first argument" (i.e. number); the 00 after the colon is the format specifier (2 numeric digits).

However, note that .NET strings are UTF-16, so a 2-character string is 4 bytes, not 2

(edit: question changed from string to byte[])

To get the bytes, use Encoding:

byte[] raw = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(s);

(obviously different encodings may give different results; UTF8 will give 2 bytes for this data)

Actually, a shorter version of the first bit is:

string s = number.ToString("00");

But the string.Format version is more flexible.