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

I think will do it for you. I cobbled it together from a similar function that returned the data as a string:

private static byte[] decode(String encoded) {
    byte result[] = new byte[encoded/2];
    char enc[] = encoded.toUpperCase().toCharArray();
    StringBuffer curr;
    for (int i = 0; i < enc.length; i += 2) {
        curr = new StringBuffer("");
        curr.append(String.valueOf(enc[i]));
        curr.append(String.valueOf(enc[i + 1]));
        result[i] = (byte) Integer.parseInt(curr.toString(), 16);
    }
    return result;
}

Answer 2

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

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.

Answer 3

EDIT: as pointed out by @mmyers, this method doesn't work on input that contains substrings corresponding to bytes with the high bit set ("80" - "FF"). The explanation is at Bug ID: 6259307 Byte.parseByte not working as advertised in the SDK Documentation.

public static final byte[] fromHexString(final String s) {
    byte[] arr = new byte[s.length()/2];
    for ( int start = 0; start < s.length(); start += 2 )
    {
        String thisByte = s.substring(start, start+2);
        arr[start/2] = Byte.parseByte(thisByte, 16);
    }
    return arr;
}

Answer 4

I found Kernel Panic to have the solution most useful to me, but ran into problems if the hex string was an odd number. solved it this way:

boolean isOdd(int value)
{
    return (value & 0x01) !=0;
}

private int hexToByte(byte[] out, int value)
{
    String hexVal = "0123456789ABCDEF"; 
    String hexValL = "0123456789abcdef";
    String st = Integer.toHexString(value);
    int len = st.length();
    if (isOdd(len))
        {
        len+=1; // need length to be an even number.
        st = ("0" + st);  // make it an even number of chars
        }
    out[0]=(byte)(len/2);
    for (int i =0;i<len;i+=2)
    {
        int hh = hexVal.indexOf(st.charAt(i));
            if (hh == -1)  hh = hexValL.indexOf(st.charAt(i));
        int lh = hexVal.indexOf(st.charAt(i+1));
            if (lh == -1)  lh = hexValL.indexOf(st.charAt(i+1));
        out[(i/2)+1] = (byte)((hh << 4)|lh);
    }
    return (len/2)+1;
}

I am adding a number of hex numbers to an array, so i pass the reference to the array I am using, and the int I need converted and returning the relative position of the next hex number. So the final byte array has [0] number of hex pairs, [1...] hex pairs, then the number of pairs...

Answer 5

The HexBinaryAdapter provides the ability to marshal and unmarshal between String and byte[].

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.adapters.HexBinaryAdapter;

public byte[] hexToBytes(String hexString) {
     HexBinaryAdapter adapter = new HexBinaryAdapter();
     byte[] bytes = adapter.unmarshal(hexString);
     return bytes;
}

That's just an example I typed in...I actually just use it as is and don't need to make a separate method for using it.

Answer 6

Actually, I think the BigInteger is solution is very nice:

new BigInteger("00A0BF", 16).toByteArray();

Edit: Not safe for leading zeros, as noted by the poster.