How to Convert Hex to a Byte Array

Convert a string representation of a hex dump to a byte array using Java?

Update (2021) - Java 17 now includes java.util.HexFormat (only took 25 years):

HexFormat.of().parseHex(s)

---

For older versions of Java:

Here's a solution that I think is better than any posted so far:

/* s must be an even-length string. */
public static byte[] hexStringToByteArray(String s) {
    int len = s.length();
    byte[] data = new byte[len / 2];
    for (int i = 0; i < len; i += 2) {
        data[i / 2] = (byte) ((Character.digit(s.charAt(i), 16) << 4)
                             + Character.digit(s.charAt(i+1), 16));
    }
    return data;
}

Reasons why it is an improvement:

• Safe with leading zeros (unlike BigInteger) and with negative byte values (unlike Byte.parseByte)

• Doesn't convert the String into a char[], or create StringBuilder and String objects for every single byte.

• No library dependencies that may not be available

Feel free to add argument checking via assert or exceptions if the argument is not known to be safe.

How can I convert a hex string to a byte array?

Here's a nice fun LINQ example.

public static byte[] StringToByteArray(string hex) {
    return Enumerable.Range(0, hex.Length)
                     .Where(x => x % 2 == 0)
                     .Select(x => Convert.ToByte(hex.Substring(x, 2), 16))
                     .ToArray();
}

Converting a hex string to a byte array

This ought to work:

int char2int(char input)
{
  if(input >= '0' && input <= '9')
    return input - '0';
  if(input >= 'A' && input <= 'F')
    return input - 'A' + 10;
  if(input >= 'a' && input <= 'f')
    return input - 'a' + 10;
  throw std::invalid_argument("Invalid input string");
}

// This function assumes src to be a zero terminated sanitized string with
// an even number of [0-9a-f] characters, and target to be sufficiently large
void hex2bin(const char* src, char* target)
{
  while(*src && src[1])
  {
    *(target++) = char2int(*src)*16 + char2int(src[1]);
    src += 2;
  }
}

Depending on your specific platform there's probably also a standard implementation though.

How to convert hex string into a bytes array, and a bytes array in the hex string?

Update: Scroll down for solution... Live Demo

The issue: you are using a lossy conversion to hex, which cannot be reversed.

var p = parseHexString(createHexString(rsa_privk[0]));

This will never be same as rsa_privk[0].

Because, createHexString() only uses the last 2 bytes from each array element.

Example:

rsa_privk[0] : [123676133, 198914513, 129998601, 245147334, 11918451, 206998232, 96766191, 75984899, 177840095, 106709334, 10180427, 208237547, 119814814, 127003446, 189062377, 84099480, 220452154, 250519075, 267883908, 115471915, 165124106, 238628722, 169382478, 42320122, 95982405, 80725759, 89608310, 85166267, 200925925, 254033325, 86971506, 191278317, 127411298, 180195794, 142776693, 188738169, 39016]

createHexString(rsa_privk[0]) : e5d109c673d8ef03df564beb9e36e9983a23842b0a724efa45ff76bbe5ad72ed62d2757968

parseHexString(createHexString(rsa_privk[0])) : [229, 209, 9, 198, 115, 216, 239, 3, 223, 86, 75, 235, 158, 54, 233, 152, 58, 35, 132, 43, 10, 114, 78, 250, 69, 255, 118, 187, 229, 173, 114, 237, 98, 210, 117, 121, 104] 

---

Update : Working Solution...

The two functions... the hex always contains 8 byte blocks, each for each element in the array...

function parseHexString(str) { 
    var result = [];
    while (str.length >= 8) { 
        result.push(parseInt(str.substring(0, 8), 16));

        str = str.substring(8, str.length);
    }

    return result;
}

function createHexString(arr) {
    var result = "";
    var z;

    for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
        var str = arr[i].toString(16);

        z = 8 - str.length + 1;
        str = Array(z).join("0") + str;

        result += str;
    }

    return result;
}

Test code...

function test() {   
    a = [123676133, 198914513, 129998601, 245147334, 11918451, 206998232, 96766191, 75984899, 177840095, 106709334, 10180427, 208237547, 119814814, 127003446, 189062377, 84099480, 220452154, 250519075, 267883908, 115471915, 165124106, 238628722, 169382478, 42320122, 95982405, 80725759, 89608310, 85166267, 200925925, 254033325, 86971506, 191278317, 127411298, 180195794, 142776693, 188738169, 39016];

    console.log("Input");
    console.log(a);

    b = createHexString(a);

    console.log("Hex");
    console.log(b);

    c = parseHexString(b); 

    console.log("Output");
    console.log(c);

    if(checkIfEqual(a, c)) {
        alert("Same");
    }
}

function checkIfEqual(arr1, arr2) {
    if (arr1.length != arr2.length) {
        return false;
    }
    //sort them first, then join them and just compare the strings
    return arr1.sort().join() == arr2.sort().join();
}

C# Convert Hex String Array to Byte Array

You have to convert (or parse) string in order to get byte since string and byte are different types:

// 10 == 10d 
byte b = Convert.ToByte("10");     // if "10" is a decimal representation
// 16 == 0x10
byte b = Convert.ToByte("10", 16); // if "10" is a hexadecimal representation

If you want to process an array, you can try a simple Linq:

using System.Linq;

...

string[] hexValues = new string[] {
  "10", "0F", "3E", "42"};

byte[] result = hexValues
  .Select(value => Convert.ToByte(value, 16))
  .ToArray();

If you want to print out result as hexadecimal, use formatting ("X2" format string - at least 2 hexadecimal digits, use captital letters):

// 10, 0F, 3E, 42
Console.Write(string.Join(", ", result.Select(b => b.ToString("X2")))); 

Compare with same array but in a different format ("d2" - at least 2 decimal digits)

// 16, 15, 62, 66 
Console.Write(string.Join(", ", result.Select(b => b.ToString("d2")))); 

If no format provided, .Net uses default one and represents byte in decimal:

// 16, 15, 62, 66 
Console.Write(string.Join(", ", result));

hexadecimal string to byte array in python

Suppose your hex string is something like

>>> hex_string = "deadbeef"

Convert it to a bytearray (Python 3 and 2.7):

>>> bytearray.fromhex(hex_string)
bytearray(b'\xde\xad\xbe\xef')

Convert it to a bytes object (Python 3):

>>> bytes.fromhex(hex_string)
b'\xde\xad\xbe\xef'

Note that bytes is an immutable version of bytearray.

Convert it to a string (Python ≤ 2.7):

>>> hex_data = hex_string.decode("hex")
>>> hex_data
"\xde\xad\xbe\xef"

C# - Convert hex string to byte array of hex values

string hexIpAddress = "0A010248"; // 10.1.2.72 => "0A010248"
byte[] bytes = new byte[hexIpAddress.Length / 2];

for (int i = 0; i < hexIpAddress.Length; i += 2)
    bytes[i/2] = Convert.ToByte(hexIpAddress.Substring(i, 2), 16);

This results in this array:

bytes = {0x0A, 0x01, 0x02, 0x48}; 

or represented as decimals:

bytes = {10, 1, 2, 72};

or as binaries 00001010, 000000001, 00000010, 01001000 (binary literals are still not supported in C#6).

The values are the same, there is no representation in any base in byte. You can only decide how the values should be represented when converting them to strings again:

foreach(byte b in bytes)
    Console.WriteLine("{0} {0:X}", b);

results in

10 A
1 1
2 2
72 48

How to convert hex to a byte array?

Something like this:

using System;

public static class Parser
{    
    static void Main()
    {
        string hex = "0xBAC893CAB8B7FE03C927417A2A3F6A6"
                     + "0BD30FF35E250011CB25507EBFCD5223B";
        byte[] parsed = ParseHex(hex);
        // Just for confirmation...
        Console.WriteLine(BitConverter.ToString(parsed));
    }

    public static byte[] ParseHex(string hex)
    {
        int offset = hex.StartsWith("0x") ? 2 : 0;
        if ((hex.Length % 2) != 0)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("Invalid length: " + hex.Length);
        }
        byte[] ret = new byte[(hex.Length-offset)/2];

        for (int i=0; i < ret.Length; i++)
        {
            ret[i] = (byte) ((ParseNybble(hex[offset]) << 4) 
                             | ParseNybble(hex[offset+1]));
            offset += 2;
        }
        return ret;
    }        

    static int ParseNybble(char c)
    {
        if (c >= '0' && c <= '9')
        {
            return c-'0';
        }
        if (c >= 'A' && c <= 'F')
        {
            return c-'A'+10;
        }
        if (c >= 'a' && c <= 'f')
        {
            return c-'a'+10;
        }
        throw new ArgumentException("Invalid hex digit: " + c);
    }
}

(EDIT: Now slightly more efficient - no substrings required...)

It's possible that ParseNybble could be more efficient. For example, a switch/case may be more efficient:

    static int ParseNybble(char c)
    {
        switch (c)
        {
            case '0': case '1': case '2': case '3': case '4':
            case '5': case '6': case '7': case '8': case '9':
                return c-'0';
            case 'A': case 'B': case 'C': case 'D': case 'E': case 'F':
                return c-'A'+10;
            case 'a': case 'b': case 'c': case 'd': case 'e': case 'f':
                return c-'a'+10;
        }
        throw new ArgumentException("Invalid hex digit: " + c);
    }

or possibly a lookup array:

    // Omitted for brevity... I'm sure you get the gist
    private static readonly int[] NybbleLookup = BuildLookup();

    private int ParseNybble(char c)
    {
        if (c > 'f')
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("Invalid hex digit: " + c);
        }
        int ret = NybbleLookup[c];
        if (ret == -1)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("Invalid hex digit: " + c);
        }
        return ret;
    }

I haven't benchmarked any of these, and I've no idea which would be the fastest. The current solution is probably the simplest though.

Hexadecimal string to byte array in C

As far as I know, there's no standard function to do so, but it's simple to achieve in the following manner:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    const char hexstring[] = "DEadbeef10203040b00b1e50", *pos = hexstring;
    unsigned char val[12];

     /* WARNING: no sanitization or error-checking whatsoever */
    for (size_t count = 0; count < sizeof val/sizeof *val; count++) {
        sscanf(pos, "%2hhx", &val[count]);
        pos += 2;
    }

    printf("0x");
    for(size_t count = 0; count < sizeof val/sizeof *val; count++)
        printf("%02x", val[count]);
    printf("\n");

    return 0;
}

---

Edit

As Al pointed out, in case of an odd number of hex digits in the string, you have to make sure you prefix it with a starting 0. For example, the string "f00f5" will be evaluated as {0xf0, 0x0f, 0x05} erroneously by the above example, instead of the proper {0x0f, 0x00, 0xf5}.

Amended the example a little bit to address the comment from @MassimoCallegari

---

Related Topics