How to fill a Marshal buffer with whitespace using NETLink

Question

Further to Todd Gayley's answer on string handling in a DLL function, I have the following code:

Needs["NETLink`"]
InstallNET["Force32Bit" -> True];

maxBufLen = 2048;
LoadNETType["System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal"];
buf = Marshal`AllocHGlobal[maxBufLen];
sqlfunction = DefineDLLFunction["getSQL", "Server.dll", "int", {"int", "IntPtr", "int"}];

selKey = 9591556;
sqlfunction[selKey, buf, maxBufLen];

numBytes = 1024;

managedArray = NETNew["System.Byte[]", numBytes];
Marshal`Copy[buf, managedArray, 0, numBytes];
bytes = NETObjectToExpression[managedArray];
sql = StringJoin@FromCharacterCode[DeleteCases[SplitBy[bytes, # != 0 &], {0 ..}]]

This works quite well except, unlike in Todd's example, sqlfunction does not return the number of bytes it has put into the buffer buf. In the code above I use 1024 bytes, but this can result in the final string being padded out with random junk from the buffer. Is there a way to fill the buffer with whitespace prior to use by sqlfunction?

There are some solutions here: How to zero out memory allocated by Marshal.AllocHGlobal? but I'm not sure how to implement them in NETLink.

Answer 1

Ok, that wasn't so difficult!

maxBufLen = 2048;
LoadNETType["System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal"];
buf = Marshal`AllocHGlobal[$maxBufLen];
Table[Marshal`WriteByte[buf, i, 32], {i, 0, 2048 - 1}];
sqlfunction = DefineDLLFunction["setSQL", "Server.dll", "int", {"int", "IntPtr", "int"}];

selKey = 9591556;
sqlfunction[selKey, buf, maxBufLen];

managedArray = NETNew["System.Byte[]", maxBufLen];
Marshal`Copy[buf, managedArray, 0, maxBufLen];
Marshal`FreeHGlobal[buf];
bytes = NETObjectToExpression[managedArray];
sql = StringTrim@StringJoin@FromCharacterCode[DeleteCases[SplitBy[bytes, # != 0 &], {0 ..}]]