How do you convert a byte array to a hexadecimal s

Question

How can you convert a byte array to a hexadecimal string, and vice versa?

Answer 1

Yet another variation for diversity:

public static byte[] FromHexString(string src)
{
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(src))
        return null;

    int index = src.Length;
    int sz = index / 2;
    if (sz <= 0)
        return null;

    byte[] rc = new byte[sz];

    while (--sz >= 0)
    {
        char lo = src[--index];
        char hi = src[--index];

        rc[sz] = (byte)(
            (
                (hi >= '0' && hi <= '9') ? hi - '0' :
                (hi >= 'a' && hi <= 'f') ? hi - 'a' + 10 :
                (hi >= 'A' && hi <= 'F') ? hi - 'A' + 10 :
                0
            )
            << 4 | 
            (
                (lo >= '0' && lo <= '9') ? lo - '0' :
                (lo >= 'a' && lo <= 'f') ? lo - 'a' + 10 :
                (lo >= 'A' && lo <= 'F') ? lo - 'A' + 10 :
                0
            )
        );
    }

    return rc;          
}

Answer 2

Not to pile on to the many answers here, but I found a fairly optimal (~4.5x better than accepted), straightforward implementation of the hex string parser. First, output from my tests (the first batch is my implementation):

Give me that string:
04c63f7842740c77e545bb0b2ade90b384f119f6ab57b680b7aa575a2f40939f

Time to parse 100,000 times: 50.4192 ms
Result as base64: BMY/eEJ0DHflRbsLKt6Qs4TxGfarV7aAt6pXWi9Ak58=
BitConverter'd: 04-C6-3F-78-42-74-0C-77-E5-45-BB-0B-2A-DE-90-B3-84-F1-19-F6-AB-5
7-B6-80-B7-AA-57-5A-2F-40-93-9F

Accepted answer: (StringToByteArray)
Time to parse 100000 times: 233.1264ms
Result as base64: BMY/eEJ0DHflRbsLKt6Qs4TxGfarV7aAt6pXWi9Ak58=
BitConverter'd: 04-C6-3F-78-42-74-0C-77-E5-45-BB-0B-2A-DE-90-B3-84-F1-19-F6-AB-5
7-B6-80-B7-AA-57-5A-2F-40-93-9F

With Mono's implementation:
Time to parse 100000 times: 777.2544ms
Result as base64: BMY/eEJ0DHflRbsLKt6Qs4TxGfarV7aAt6pXWi9Ak58=
BitConverter'd: 04-C6-3F-78-42-74-0C-77-E5-45-BB-0B-2A-DE-90-B3-84-F1-19-F6-AB-5
7-B6-80-B7-AA-57-5A-2F-40-93-9F

With SoapHexBinary:
Time to parse 100000 times: 845.1456ms
Result as base64: BMY/eEJ0DHflRbsLKt6Qs4TxGfarV7aAt6pXWi9Ak58=
BitConverter'd: 04-C6-3F-78-42-74-0C-77-E5-45-BB-0B-2A-DE-90-B3-84-F1-19-F6-AB-5
7-B6-80-B7-AA-57-5A-2F-40-93-9F

The base64 and 'BitConverter'd' lines are there to test for correctness. Note that they are equal.

The implementation:

public static byte[] ToByteArrayFromHex(string hexString)
{
  if (hexString.Length % 2 != 0) throw new ArgumentException("String must have an even length");
  var array = new byte[hexString.Length / 2];
  for (int i = 0; i < hexString.Length; i += 2)
  {
    array[i/2] = ByteFromTwoChars(hexString[i], hexString[i + 1]);
  }
  return array;
}

private static byte ByteFromTwoChars(char p, char p_2)
{
  byte ret;
  if (p <= '9' && p >= '0')
  {
    ret = (byte) ((p - '0') << 4);
  }
  else if (p <= 'f' && p >= 'a')
  {
    ret = (byte) ((p - 'a' + 10) << 4);
  }
  else if (p <= 'F' && p >= 'A')
  {
    ret = (byte) ((p - 'A' + 10) << 4);
  } else throw new ArgumentException("Char is not a hex digit: " + p,"p");

  if (p_2 <= '9' && p_2 >= '0')
  {
    ret |= (byte) ((p_2 - '0'));
  }
  else if (p_2 <= 'f' && p_2 >= 'a')
  {
    ret |= (byte) ((p_2 - 'a' + 10));
  }
  else if (p_2 <= 'F' && p_2 >= 'A')
  {
    ret |= (byte) ((p_2 - 'A' + 10));
  } else throw new ArgumentException("Char is not a hex digit: " + p_2, "p_2");

  return ret;
}

I tried some stuff with unsafe and moving the (clearly redundant) character-to-nibble if sequence to another method, but this was the fastest it got.

(I concede that this answers half the question. I felt that the string->byte[] conversion was underrepresented, while the byte[]->string angle seems to be well covered. Thus, this answer.)

Answer 3

Another lookup table based approach. This one uses only one lookup table for each byte, instead of a lookup table per nibble.

private static readonly uint[] _lookup32 = CreateLookup32();

private static uint[] CreateLookup32()
{
    var result = new uint[256];
    for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++)
    {
        string s=i.ToString("X2");
        result[i] = ((uint)s[0]) + ((uint)s[1] << 16);
    }
    return result;
}

private static string ByteArrayToHexViaLookup32(byte[] bytes)
{
    var lookup32 = _lookup32;
    var result = new char[bytes.Length * 2];
    for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
    {
        var val = lookup32[bytes[i]];
        result[2*i] = (char)val;
        result[2*i + 1] = (char) (val >> 16);
    }
    return new string(result);
}

I also tested variants of this using ushort, struct{char X1, X2}, struct{byte X1, X2} in the lookup table.

Depending on the compilation target (x86, X64) those either had the approximately same performance or were slightly slower than this variant.

---

And for even higher performance, its unsafe sibling:

private static readonly uint[] _lookup32Unsafe = CreateLookup32Unsafe();
private static readonly uint* _lookup32UnsafeP = (uint*)GCHandle.Alloc(_lookup32Unsafe,GCHandleType.Pinned).AddrOfPinnedObject();

private static uint[] CreateLookup32Unsafe()
{
    var result = new uint[256];
    for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++)
    {
        string s=i.ToString("X2");
        if(BitConverter.IsLittleEndian)
            result[i] = ((uint)s[0]) + ((uint)s[1] << 16);
        else
            result[i] = ((uint)s[1]) + ((uint)s[0] << 16);
    }
    return result;
}

public static string ByteArrayToHexViaLookup32Unsafe(byte[] bytes)
{
    var lookupP = _lookup32UnsafeP;
    var result = new char[bytes.Length * 2];
    fixed(byte* bytesP = bytes)
    fixed (char* resultP = result)
    {
        uint* resultP2 = (uint*)resultP;
        for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
        {
            resultP2[i] = lookupP[bytesP[i]];
        }
    }
    return new string(result);
}

Or if you consider it acceptable to write into the string directly:

public static string ByteArrayToHexViaLookup32UnsafeDirect(byte[] bytes)
{
    var lookupP = _lookup32UnsafeP;
    var result = new string((char)0, bytes.Length * 2);
    fixed (byte* bytesP = bytes)
    fixed (char* resultP = result)
    {
        uint* resultP2 = (uint*)resultP;
        for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
        {
            resultP2[i] = lookupP[bytesP[i]];
        }
    }
    return result;
}

Answer 4

Why make it complex? This is simple in Visual Studio 2008:

C#:

string hex = BitConverter.ToString(YourByteArray).Replace("-", "");

VB:

Dim hex As String = BitConverter.ToString(YourByteArray).Replace("-", "")

Answer 5

Two mashups which folds the two nibble operations into one.

Probably pretty efficient version:

public static string ByteArrayToString2(byte[] ba)
{
    char[] c = new char[ba.Length * 2];
    for( int i = 0; i < ba.Length * 2; ++i)
    {
        byte b = (byte)((ba[i>>1] >> 4*((i&1)^1)) & 0xF);
        c[i] = (char)(55 + b + (((b-10)>>31)&-7));
    }
    return new string( c );
}

Decadent linq-with-bit-hacking version:

public static string ByteArrayToString(byte[] ba)
{
    return string.Concat( ba.SelectMany( b => new int[] { b >> 4, b & 0xF }).Select( b => (char)(55 + b + (((b-10)>>31)&-7))) );
}

And reverse:

public static byte[] HexStringToByteArray( string s )
{
    byte[] ab = new byte[s.Length>>1];
    for( int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++ )
    {
        int b = s[i];
        b = (b - '0') + ((('9' - b)>>31)&-7);
        ab[i>>1] |= (byte)(b << 4*((i&1)^1));
    }
    return ab;
}

Answer 6

This is a great post. I like Waleed's solution. I haven't run it through patridge's test but it seems to be quite fast. I also needed the reverse process, converting a hex string to a byte array, so I wrote it as a reversal of Waleed's solution. Not sure if it's any faster than Tomalak's original solution. Again, I did not run the reverse process through patridge's test either.

private byte[] HexStringToByteArray(string hexString)
{
    int hexStringLength = hexString.Length;
    byte[] b = new byte[hexStringLength / 2];
    for (int i = 0; i < hexStringLength; i += 2)
    {
        int topChar = (hexString[i] > 0x40 ? hexString[i] - 0x37 : hexString[i] - 0x30) << 4;
        int bottomChar = hexString[i + 1] > 0x40 ? hexString[i + 1] - 0x37 : hexString[i + 1] - 0x30;
        b[i / 2] = Convert.ToByte(topChar + bottomChar);
    }
    return b;
}