What is the fastest way to convert a float[] to a byte[]?

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There is a dirty fast (not unsafe code) way of doing this:

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)]
struct BytetoDoubleConverter
{
    [FieldOffset(0)]
    public Byte[] Bytes;

    [FieldOffset(0)]
    public Double[] Doubles;
}
//...
static Double Sum(byte[] data)
{
    BytetoDoubleConverter convert = new BytetoDoubleConverter { Bytes = data };
    Double result = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < convert.Doubles.Length / sizeof(Double); i++)
    {
        result += convert.Doubles[i];
    }
    return result;
}

This will work, but I’m not sure of the support on Mono or newer versions of the CLR. The only strange thing is that the array.Length is the bytes length. This can be explained because it looks at the array length stored with the array, and because this array was a byte array that length will still be in byte length. The indexer does think about the Double being eight bytes large so no calculation is necessary there.

I’ve looked for it some more, and it’s actually described on MSDN, How to: Create a C/C++ Union by Using Attributes (C# and Visual Basic), so chances are this will be supported in future versions. I am not sure about Mono though.

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