What is the equivalent of memset in C#?

I need to fill a byte[] with a single non-zero value. How can I do this in C# without looping through each byte in the array?

Update: The comments seem to have split this into two questions -

1. Is there a Framework method to fill a byte[] that might be akin to memset
2. What is the most efficient way to do it when we are dealing with a very large array?

I totally agree that using a simple loop works just fine, as Eric and others have pointed out. The point of the question was to see if I could learn something new about C# :) I think Juliet's method for a Parallel operation should be even faster than a simple loop.

Benchmarks: Thanks to Mikael Svenson: http://techmikael.blogspot.com/2009/12/filling-array-with-default-value.html

It turns out the simple for loop is the way to go unless you want to use unsafe code.

Apologies for not being clearer in my original post. Eric and Mark are both correct in their comments; need to have more focused questions for sure. Thanks for everyone's suggestions and responses.

You could use Enumerable.Repeat:

byte[] a = Enumerable.Repeat((byte)10, 100).ToArray();

The first parameter is the element you want repeated, and the second parameter is the number of times to repeat it.

This is OK for small arrays but you should use the looping method if you are dealing with very large arrays and performance is a concern.

Actually, there is little known IL operation called Initblk (English version) which does exactly that. So, let's use it as a method that doesn't require "unsafe". Here's the helper class:

public static class Util
{
    static Util()
    {
        var dynamicMethod = new DynamicMethod("Memset", MethodAttributes.Public | MethodAttributes.Static, CallingConventions.Standard,
            null, new [] { typeof(IntPtr), typeof(byte), typeof(int) }, typeof(Util), true);

        var generator = dynamicMethod.GetILGenerator();
        generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);
        generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_1);
        generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_2);
        generator.Emit(OpCodes.Initblk);
        generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);

        MemsetDelegate = (Action<IntPtr, byte, int>)dynamicMethod.CreateDelegate(typeof(Action<IntPtr, byte, int>));
    }

    public static void Memset(byte[] array, byte what, int length)
    {
        var gcHandle = GCHandle.Alloc(array, GCHandleType.Pinned);
        MemsetDelegate(gcHandle.AddrOfPinnedObject(), what, length);
        gcHandle.Free();
    }

    public static void ForMemset(byte[] array, byte what, int length)
    {
        for(var i = 0; i < length; i++)
        {
            array[i] = what;
        }
    }

    private static Action<IntPtr, byte, int> MemsetDelegate;

}

And what is the performance? Here's my result for Windows/.NET and Linux/Mono (different PCs).

Mono/for:     00:00:01.1356610
Mono/initblk: 00:00:00.2385835 

.NET/for:     00:00:01.7463579
.NET/initblk: 00:00:00.5953503

So it's worth considering. Note that the resulting IL will not be verifiable.

Building on Lucero's answer, here is a faster version. It will double the number of bytes copied using Buffer.BlockCopy every iteration. Interestingly enough, it outperforms it by a factor of 10 when using relatively small arrays (1000), but the difference is not that large for larger arrays (1000000), it is always faster though. The good thing about it is that it performs well even down to small arrays. It becomes faster than the naive approach at around length = 100. For a one million element byte array, it was 43 times faster. (tested on Intel i7, .Net 2.0)

public static void MemSet(byte[] array, byte value) {
    if (array == null) {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("array");
    }

    int block = 32, index = 0;
    int length = Math.Min(block, array.Length);

    //Fill the initial array
    while (index < length) {
        array[index++] = value;
    }

    length = array.Length;
    while (index < length) {
        Buffer.BlockCopy(array, 0, array, index, Math.Min(block, length-index));
        index += block;
        block *= 2;
    }
}