title: Quickest way (performance-wise) to turn a string into a byte[] array in C# using the ASCII character encoding
body: <p>What's the fastest way to turn a string into a byte[] array in C#?  I'm sending tonnes of string data through sockets and need to optimize every single operation.  Currently I transform the strings in to byte[] arrays before sending using:</p>
  
  <pre><code>private static readonly Encoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
  //...
  byte[] bytes = encoding.GetBytes(someString);
  socket.Send(bytes);
  //...
  </code></pre>