Convert decimal to hexadecimal in UNIX shell scrip

Question

In a UNIX shell script, what can I use to convert decimal numbers into hexadecimal? I thought od would do the trick, but it's not realizing I'm feeding it ASCII representations of numbers.

printf? Gross! Using it for now, but what else is available?

Answer 1

echo "obase=16; 34" | bc

If you want to filter a whole file of integers, one per line:

( echo "obase=16" ; cat file_of_integers ) | bc

Answer 2

Hexidecimal to decimal:

$ echo $((0xfee10000))
4276158464

Decimal to hexadecimal:

$ printf '%x\n' 26
1a

Answer 3

bash-4.2$ printf '%x\n' 4294967295
ffffffff

bash-4.2$ printf -v hex '%x' 4294967295
bash-4.2$ echo $hex
ffffffff

Answer 4

This is not a shell script, but it is the cli tool I'm using to convert numbers among bin/oct/dec/hex:

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    if (@ARGV < 2) {
      printf("Convert numbers among bin/oct/dec/hex\n");
      printf("\nUsage: base b/o/d/x num num2 ... \n");
      exit;
    }

    for ($i=1; $i<@ARGV; $i++) {
      if ($ARGV[0] eq "b") {
                    $num = oct("0b$ARGV[$i]");
      } elsif ($ARGV[0] eq "o") {
                    $num = oct($ARGV[$i]);
      } elsif ($ARGV[0] eq "d") {
                    $num = $ARGV[$i];
      } elsif ($ARGV[0] eq "h") {
                    $num = hex($ARGV[$i]);
      } else {
                    printf("Usage: base b/o/d/x num num2 ... \n");
                    exit;
      }
      printf("0x%x = 0d%d = 0%o = 0b%b\n", $num, $num, $num, $num);
    }

Answer 5

Tried printf(1)?

printf "%x\n" 34
22

There are probably ways of doing that with builtin functions in all shells but it would be less portable. I've not checked the POSIX sh specs to see whether it has such capabilities.