System.IO.Ports.SerialPort.Read Method

Reads a number of bytes from the System.IO.Ports.SerialPort input buffer and writes those bytes into a byte array at the specified offset.

Syntax

public int Read (byte[] buffer, int offset, int count)

Parameters

buffer
The byte array to write the input to.
offset
The offset in the buffer array to begin reading from.
count
The number of bytes to read.

Returns

The number of bytes read.

Remarks

If it is necessary to switch between reading text and reading binary data from the stream, select a protocol that carefully defines the boundary between text and binary data, such as manually reading bytes and decoding the data.

Because the System.IO.Ports.SerialPort class buffers data, and the stream contained in the SerialPort.BaseStream property does not, the two might conflict about how many bytes are available to read. The SerialPort.BytesToRead property can indicate that there are bytes to read, but these bytes might not be accessible to the stream contained in the SerialPort.BaseStream property because they have been buffered to the System.IO.Ports.SerialPort class.

The SerialPort.Read(Byte[], int, int) method does not block other operations when the number of bytes read equals count but there are still unread bytes available on the serial port.

Requirements

Namespace: System.IO.Ports
Assembly: System (in System.dll)
Assembly Versions: 2.0.0.0, 4.0.0.0
Since: .NET 2.0