Convert a string representation of a hex dump to a

Question

I am looking for a way to convert a long string (from a dump), that represents hex values into a byte array.

I couldn't have phrased it better than the person that posted the same question here.

But to keep it original, I'll phrase it my own way: suppose I have a string "00A0BF" that I would like interpreted as the

byte[] {0x00,0xA0,0xBf}

what should I do?

I am a Java novice and ended up using BigInteger and watching out for leading hex zeros. But I think it is ugly and I am sure I am missing something simple.

Answer 1

One-liners:

import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;

public static String toHexString(byte[] array) {
    return DatatypeConverter.printHexBinary(array);
}

public static byte[] toByteArray(String s) {
    return DatatypeConverter.parseHexBinary(s);
}

For those of you interested in the actual code behind the One-liners from FractalizeR (I needed that since javax.xml.bind is not available for Android (by default)), this comes from com.sun.xml.internal.bind.DatatypeConverterImpl.java :

public byte[] parseHexBinary(String s) {
    final int len = s.length();

    // "111" is not a valid hex encoding.
    if( len%2 != 0 )
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("hexBinary needs to be even-length: "+s);

    byte[] out = new byte[len/2];

    for( int i=0; i<len; i+=2 ) {
        int h = hexToBin(s.charAt(i  ));
        int l = hexToBin(s.charAt(i+1));
        if( h==-1 || l==-1 )
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("contains illegal character for hexBinary: "+s);

        out[i/2] = (byte)(h*16+l);
    }

    return out;
}

private static int hexToBin( char ch ) {
    if( '0'<=ch && ch<='9' )    return ch-'0';
    if( 'A'<=ch && ch<='F' )    return ch-'A'+10;
    if( 'a'<=ch && ch<='f' )    return ch-'a'+10;
    return -1;
}

private static final char[] hexCode = "0123456789ABCDEF".toCharArray();

public String printHexBinary(byte[] data) {
    StringBuilder r = new StringBuilder(data.length*2);
    for ( byte b : data) {
        r.append(hexCode[(b >> 4) & 0xF]);
        r.append(hexCode[(b & 0xF)]);
    }
    return r.toString();
}

Answer 2

If you have a preference for Java 8 streams as your coding style then this can be achieved using just JDK primitives.

String hex = "0001027f80fdfeff";

byte[] converted = IntStream.range(0, hex.length() / 2)
    .map(i -> Character.digit(hex.charAt(i * 2), 16) << 4 | Character.digit(hex.charAt((i * 2) + 1), 16))
    .collect(ByteArrayOutputStream::new,
             ByteArrayOutputStream::write,
             (s1, s2) -> s1.write(s2.toByteArray(), 0, s2.size()))
    .toByteArray();

The , 0, s2.size() parameters in the collector concatenate function can be omitted if you don't mind catching IOException.

Answer 3

Based on the op voted solution, the following should be a bit more efficient:

  public static byte [] hexStringToByteArray (final String s) {
    if (s == null || (s.length () % 2) == 1)
      throw new IllegalArgumentException ();
    final char [] chars = s.toCharArray ();
    final int len = chars.length;
    final byte [] data = new byte [len / 2];
    for (int i = 0; i < len; i += 2) {
      data[i / 2] = (byte) ((Character.digit (chars[i], 16) << 4) + Character.digit (chars[i + 1], 16));
    }
    return data;
  }

Because: the initial conversion to a char array spares the length checks in charAt

Answer 4

For Me this was the solution, HEX="FF01" then split to FF(255) and 01(01)

private static byte[] BytesEncode(String encoded) {
    //System.out.println(encoded.length());
    byte result[] = new byte[encoded.length() / 2];
    char enc[] = encoded.toUpperCase().toCharArray();
    String curr = "";
    for (int i = 0; i < encoded.length(); i=i+2) {
        curr = encoded.substring(i,i+2);
        System.out.println(curr);
        if(i==0){
            result[i]=((byte) Integer.parseInt(curr, 16));
        }else{
            result[i/2]=((byte) Integer.parseInt(curr, 16));
        }

    }
    return result;
}

Answer 5

public static byte[] hex2ba(String sHex) throws Hex2baException {
    if (1==sHex.length()%2) {
        throw(new Hex2baException("Hex string need even number of chars"));
    }

    byte[] ba = new byte[sHex.length()/2];
    for (int i=0;i<sHex.length()/2;i++) {
        ba[i] = (Integer.decode(
                "0x"+sHex.substring(i*2, (i+1)*2))).byteValue();
    }
    return ba;
}

Answer 6

I've always used a method like

public static final byte[] fromHexString(final String s) {
    String[] v = s.split(" ");
    byte[] arr = new byte[v.length];
    int i = 0;
    for(String val: v) {
        arr[i++] =  Integer.decode("0x" + val).byteValue();

    }
    return arr;
}

this method splits on space delimited hex values but it wouldn't be hard to make it split the string on any other criteria such as into groupings of two characters.