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

Inverse function for Waleed Eissa code (Hex String To Byte Array):

    public static byte[] HexToBytes(this string hexString)        
    {
        byte[] b = new byte[hexString.Length / 2];            
        char c;
        for (int i = 0; i < hexString.Length / 2; i++)
        {
            c = hexString[i * 2];
            b[i] = (byte)((c < 0x40 ? c - 0x30 : (c < 0x47 ? c - 0x37 : c - 0x57)) << 4);
            c = hexString[i * 2 + 1];
            b[i] += (byte)(c < 0x40 ? c - 0x30 : (c < 0x47 ? c - 0x37 : c - 0x57));
        }

        return b;
    }

Waleed Eissa function with lower case support:

    public static string BytesToHex(this byte[] barray, bool toLowerCase = true)
    {
        byte addByte = 0x37;
        if (toLowerCase) addByte = 0x57;
        char[] c = new char[barray.Length * 2];
        byte b;
        for (int i = 0; i < barray.Length; ++i)
        {
            b = ((byte)(barray[i] >> 4));
            c[i * 2] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + addByte : b + 0x30);
            b = ((byte)(barray[i] & 0xF));
            c[i * 2 + 1] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + addByte : b + 0x30);
        }

        return new string(c);
    }

Answer 2

I did not get the code you suggested to work, Olipro. hex[i] + hex[i+1] apparently returned an int.

I did, however have some success by taking some hints from Waleeds code and hammering this together. It's ugly as hell but it seems to work and performs at 1/3 of the time compared to the others according to my tests (using patridges testing mechanism). Depending on input size. Switching around the ?:s to separate out 0-9 first would probably yield a slightly faster result since there are more numbers than letters.

public static byte[] StringToByteArray2(string hex)
{
    byte[] bytes = new byte[hex.Length/2];
    int bl = bytes.Length;
    for (int i = 0; i < bl; ++i)
    {
        bytes[i] = (byte)((hex[2 * i] > 'F' ? hex[2 * i] - 0x57 : hex[2 * i] > '9' ? hex[2 * i] - 0x37 : hex[2 * i] - 0x30) << 4);
        bytes[i] |= (byte)(hex[2 * i + 1] > 'F' ? hex[2 * i + 1] - 0x57 : hex[2 * i + 1] > '9' ? hex[2 * i + 1] - 0x37 : hex[2 * i + 1] - 0x30);
    }
    return bytes;
}

Answer 3

Another way is by using stackalloc to reduce GC memory pressure:

static string ByteToHexBitFiddle(byte[] bytes)
{
        var c = stackalloc char[bytes.Length * 2 + 1];
        int b; 
        for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; ++i)
        {
            b = bytes[i] >> 4;
            c[i * 2] = (char)(55 + b + (((b - 10) >> 31) & -7));
            b = bytes[i] & 0xF;
            c[i * 2 + 1] = (char)(55 + b + (((b - 10) >> 31) & -7));
        }
        c[bytes.Length * 2 ] = '\0';
        return new string(c);
}

Answer 4

Here's my shot at it. I've created a pair of extension classes to extend string and byte. On the large file test, the performance is comparable to Byte Manipulation 2.

The code below for ToHexString is an optimized implementation of the lookup and shift algorithm. It is almost identical to the one by Behrooz, but it turns out using a foreach to iterate and a counter is faster than an explicitly indexing for.

It comes in 2nd place behind Byte Manipulation 2 on my machine and is very readable code. The following test results are also of interest:

ToHexStringCharArrayWithCharArrayLookup: 41,589.69 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 1.5X ToHexStringCharArrayWithStringLookup: 50,764.06 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 1.2X ToHexStringStringBuilderWithCharArrayLookup: 62,812.87 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 1.0X

Based on the above results it seems safe to conclude that:

1. The penalties for indexing into a string to perform the lookup vs. a char array are significant in the large file test.
2. The penalties for using a StringBuilder of known capacity vs. a char array of known size to create the string are even more significant.

Here's the code:

using System;

namespace ConversionExtensions
{
    public static class ByteArrayExtensions
    {
        private readonly static char[] digits = new char[] { '0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F' };

        public static string ToHexString(this byte[] bytes)
        {
            char[] hex = new char[bytes.Length * 2];
            int index = 0;

            foreach (byte b in bytes)
            {
                hex[index++] = digits[b >> 4];
                hex[index++] = digits[b & 0x0F];
            }

            return new string(hex);
        }
    }
}


using System;
using System.IO;

namespace ConversionExtensions
{
    public static class StringExtensions
    {
        public static byte[] ToBytes(this string hexString)
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(hexString) && hexString.Length % 2 != 0)
            {
                throw new FormatException("Hexadecimal string must not be empty and must contain an even number of digits to be valid.");
            }

            hexString = hexString.ToUpperInvariant();
            byte[] data = new byte[hexString.Length / 2];

            for (int index = 0; index < hexString.Length; index += 2)
            {
                int highDigitValue = hexString[index] <= '9' ? hexString[index] - '0' : hexString[index] - 'A' + 10;
                int lowDigitValue = hexString[index + 1] <= '9' ? hexString[index + 1] - '0' : hexString[index + 1] - 'A' + 10;

                if (highDigitValue < 0 || lowDigitValue < 0 || highDigitValue > 15 || lowDigitValue > 15)
                {
                    throw new FormatException("An invalid digit was encountered. Valid hexadecimal digits are 0-9 and A-F.");
                }
                else
                {
                    byte value = (byte)((highDigitValue << 4) | (lowDigitValue & 0x0F));
                    data[index / 2] = value;
                }
            }

            return data;
        }
    }
}

Below are the test results that I got when I put my code in @patridge's testing project on my machine. I also added a test for converting to a byte array from hexadecimal. The test runs that exercised my code are ByteArrayToHexViaOptimizedLookupAndShift and HexToByteArrayViaByteManipulation. The HexToByteArrayViaConvertToByte was taken from XXXX. The HexToByteArrayViaSoapHexBinary is the one from @Mykroft's answer.

Intel Pentium III Xeon processor

    Cores: 4 <br/>
    Current Clock Speed: 1576 <br/>
    Max Clock Speed: 3092 <br/>

---

Converting array of bytes into hexadecimal string representation

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ByteArrayToHexViaByteManipulation2: 39,366.64 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 22.4X

ByteArrayToHexViaOptimizedLookupAndShift: 41,588.64 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 21.2X

ByteArrayToHexViaLookup: 55,509.56 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 15.9X

ByteArrayToHexViaByteManipulation: 65,349.12 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 13.5X

ByteArrayToHexViaLookupAndShift: 86,926.87 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 10.2X

ByteArrayToHexStringViaBitConverter: 139,353.73 average ticks (over 1000 runs),6.3X

ByteArrayToHexViaSoapHexBinary: 314,598.77 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 2.8X

ByteArrayToHexStringViaStringBuilderForEachByteToString: 344,264.63 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 2.6X

ByteArrayToHexStringViaStringBuilderAggregateByteToString: 382,623.44 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 2.3X

ByteArrayToHexStringViaStringBuilderForEachAppendFormat: 818,111.95 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 1.1X

ByteArrayToHexStringViaStringConcatArrayConvertAll: 839,244.84 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 1.1X

ByteArrayToHexStringViaStringBuilderAggregateAppendFormat: 867,303.98 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 1.0X

ByteArrayToHexStringViaStringJoinArrayConvertAll: 882,710.28 average ticks (over 1000 runs), 1.0X

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Answer 5

Another fast function...

private static readonly byte[] HexNibble = new byte[] {
    0x0, 0x1, 0x2, 0x3, 0x4, 0x5, 0x6, 0x7,
    0x8, 0x9, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0,
    0x0, 0xA, 0xB, 0xC, 0xD, 0xE, 0xF, 0x0,
    0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0,
    0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0,
    0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0,
    0x0, 0xA, 0xB, 0xC, 0xD, 0xE, 0xF
};

public static byte[] HexStringToByteArray( string str )
{
    int byteCount = str.Length >> 1;
    byte[] result = new byte[byteCount + (str.Length & 1)];
    for( int i = 0; i < byteCount; i++ )
        result[i] = (byte) (HexNibble[str[i << 1] - 48] << 4 | HexNibble[str[(i << 1) + 1] - 48]);
    if( (str.Length & 1) != 0 )
        result[byteCount] = (byte) HexNibble[str[str.Length - 1] - 48];
    return result;
}

Answer 6

In terms of speed, this seems to be better than anything here:

  public static string ToHexString(byte[] data) {
    byte b;
    int i, j, k;
    int l = data.Length;
    char[] r = new char[l * 2];
    for (i = 0, j = 0; i < l; ++i) {
      b = data[i];
      k = b >> 4;
      r[j++] = (char)(k > 9 ? k + 0x37 : k + 0x30);
      k = b & 15;
      r[j++] = (char)(k > 9 ? k + 0x37 : k + 0x30);
    }
    return new string(r);
  }