These days C# has Span<byte> ¹) and ReadOnlySpan<byte> ²) which has a whole bunch of string-like methods, but the version of C# it requires might be newer than you're happy with.

¹) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.span-1

²) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.readonlys...