CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#stringhexascii
Dave Carruthers
Dave Carruthers

Reputation: 550

Hex string to plain text

I have hex representing ascii values stored in the following format. 

// Hex reperesention of ascii string
string hexString = "48-65-6C-6C-6F-20-77-6F-72-6C-64-21-21-21";

// Could someone help fill in the blanks here? 
private string hexConverter(string hexString)
{
    string asciiCharString;

    // Convert it

    return asciiCharString;
}

so when called;

string s = hexConverter(hexString);

string s would contain "Hello world!!!" in this case.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1565

Answers (3)

poy
poy

Reputation: 10507

Lets break this question down...

So you first want to break up the string based on hyphens ('-'). To do this, we would use Split('-'). This yields an array of strings. 

hexString.Split('-')

We then want to convert those strings into a number. Because this is ASCII, lets convert each string into a byte.

byte.Parse(value, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber)

Once we have a bunch of bytes, then we can convert it into a String using an ASCII encoder (Encoding.ASCII.GetString())

So to put it all together:

static string hexConverter(string hexString)
{
  return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(fetchBytes(hexString).ToArray());
}

static IEnumerable<byte> fetchBytes(String hexString)
{
  foreach (var value in hexString.Split('-'))
    yield return byte.Parse(value, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber);
}

Encoding

If at a later date you decide you need UTF-8 or something else, then all you would need to do is replace Encoding.ASCII with Encoding.UTF8, and the rest of the logic will still work.

Upvotes: 0

Gonzalo
Gonzalo

Reputation: 2876

private string hexConverter(string hexString)
{
    string asciiCharString ="" ;

    var splitResult = hexString.Split('-');

    foreach (string hexChar in splitResult )
    {
        var byteChar = int.Parse(hexChar, NumberStyles.HexNumber);
        asciiCharString += (char)byteChar;
    }

    return asciiCharString;
}

// Test
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    string hexString = "48-65-6C-6C-6F-20-77-6F-72-6C-64-21-21-21";
    string asciiString = hexConverter(hexString);

    MessageBox.Show(asciiString);
}

Upvotes: 0

DoctorMick
DoctorMick

Reputation: 6793

var convertedString = new StringBuilder();

foreach(var hex in hexString.Split('-'))
{
    var unicode = int.Parse(hex, NumberStyles.HexNumber);
    convertedString.Append((char)unicode);
}

return convertedString.ToString();

Upvotes: 2

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