Find and extract delimited packet in buffer

Question

I'm writing in VB.NET, using VS Community 2013. I don't know much about this language. I have managed to make my code work, but I suspect it is possible to improve the code a lot.

This code extracts packets from some data I've received using TcpClient.

Private inbuf(10000) As Byte
Private inoff As Integer

Private Sub ProcessBuffer

    ' Buffer may contain multiple packets, delimited by a newline
    Do While 1
        Dim newline As Byte = 10
        Dim newline_index = System.Array.IndexOf(Of Byte)([inbuf], newline) ' I think this is zero-based index
        Dim Data As String = Nothing  ' if I leave this initializer out then Data seems to retain its value for next loop iteration

        If (newline_index >= 0 AndAlso newline_index < inoff) Then   ' packet found
            Data = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(inbuf, 0, newline_index)
            inbuf = inbuf.Skip(newline_index + 1).ToArray()
            ReDim Preserve inbuf(10000) ' the Skip shortened the array
            inoff = inoff - (newline_index + 1)
            If inoff < 0 Then inoff = 0 ' shouldn't happen but seems to happen sometimes?
        End If

        ' If we did not find a newline (or the input was empty string), it means we need to wait for more input
        If String.IsNullOrEmpty(Data) Then
            Return
        End If

        ' Process the response string
        handle_packet(Data)
    Loop
End Sub

Answer 1

Not a full review, but:

If String.IsNullOrEmpty(Data) Then is completely unnecessary. Because Data will be null if you didn't set it within the If portion. Just add an else to the previous if and have it return.

If (newline_index >= 0 AndAlso newline_index < inoff) Then   ' packet found
    ...
else 
    Return
End If

Also your variable names could use some work. I actually don't know what inoff is supposed to stand for here.