byte[] to hex string [duplicate]

Question

There is a built in method for this:

byte[] data = { 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 };

string hex = BitConverter.ToString(data);

Result: 01-02-04-08-10-20

If you want it without the dashes, just remove them:

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

Result: 010204081020

If you want a more compact representation, you can use Base64:

string base64 = Convert.ToBase64String(data);

Result: AQIECBAg

I thought I would attempt to compare the speed of each of the methods listed here for the hell of it. I based the speed testing code off this.

The result is that BitConverter+String.Replace seems to be faster than most other simple ways. But the speed can be improved with algorithms like Nathan Moinvaziri's ByteArrayToHexString or Kurt's ToHex.

I also found it interesting that string.Concat and string.Join are much slower than StringBuilder implementations for long strings, but similar for shorter arrays. Probably due to expanding the StringBuilder on the longer strings, so setting the initial size should negate this difference.

Took each bit of code from an answer here:
BitConvertRep = Answer by Guffa, BitConverter and String.Replace (I'd recommend for most cases)
StringBuilder = Answer by Quintin Robinson, foreach char StringBuilder.Append
LinqConcat = Answer by Michael Buen, string.Concat of Linq built array
LinqJoin = Answer by mloskot, string.Join of Linq built array
LinqAgg = Answer by Matthew Whited, IEnumerable.Aggregate with StringBuilder
ToHex = Answer by Kurt, sets chars in an array, using byte values to get hex
ByteArrayToHexString = Answer by Nathan Moinvaziri, approx same speed as the ToHex above, and is probably easier to read (I'd recommend for speed)
ToHexFromTable = Linked in answer by Nathan Moinvaziri, for me this is near the same speed as the above 2 but requires an array of 256 strings to always exist

With: LONG_STRING_LENGTH = 1000 * 1024;

BitConvertRep calculation Time Elapsed 27,202 ms (fastest built in/simple)

StringBuilder calculation Time Elapsed 75,723 ms (StringBuilder no reallocate)

LinqConcat calculation Time Elapsed 182,094 ms

LinqJoin calculation Time Elapsed 181,142 ms

LinqAgg calculation Time Elapsed 93,087 ms (StringBuilder with reallocating)

ToHex calculation Time Elapsed 19,167 ms (fastest)

With: LONG_STRING_LENGTH = 100 * 1024;, Similar results

BitConvertReplace calculation Time Elapsed 3431 ms

StringBuilder calculation Time Elapsed 8289 ms

LinqConcat calculation Time Elapsed 21512 ms

LinqJoin calculation Time Elapsed 19433 ms

LinqAgg calculation Time Elapsed 9230 ms

ToHex calculation Time Elapsed 1976 ms

With: int MANY_STRING_COUNT = 1000; int MANY_STRING_LENGTH = 1024; (Same byte count as first test but in different arrays)

BitConvertReplace calculation Time Elapsed 25,680 ms

StringBuilder calculation Time Elapsed 78,411 ms

LinqConcat calculation Time Elapsed 101,233 ms

LinqJoin calculation Time Elapsed 99,311 ms

LinqAgg calculation Time Elapsed 84,660 ms

ToHex calculation Time Elapsed 18,221 ms

With: int MANY_STRING_COUNT = 2000; int MANY_STRING_LENGTH = 20;

BitConvertReplace calculation Time Elapsed 1347 ms

StringBuilder calculation Time Elapsed 3234 ms

LinqConcat calculation Time Elapsed 5013 ms

LinqJoin calculation Time Elapsed 4826 ms

LinqAgg calculation Time Elapsed 3589 ms

ToHex calculation Time Elapsed 772 ms

Testing code I used:

void Main()
{
    int LONG_STRING_LENGTH = 100 * 1024;
    int MANY_STRING_COUNT = 1024;
    int MANY_STRING_LENGTH = 100;

    var source = GetRandomBytes(LONG_STRING_LENGTH);

    List<byte[]> manyString = new List<byte[]>(MANY_STRING_COUNT);
    for (int i = 0; i < MANY_STRING_COUNT; ++i)
    {
        manyString.Add(GetRandomBytes(MANY_STRING_LENGTH));
    }

    var algorithms = new Dictionary<string,Func<byte[], string>>();
    algorithms["BitConvertReplace"] = BitConv;
    algorithms["StringBuilder"] = StringBuilderTest;
    algorithms["LinqConcat"] = LinqConcat;
    algorithms["LinqJoin"] = LinqJoin;
    algorithms["LinqAgg"] = LinqAgg;
    algorithms["ToHex"] = ToHex;
    algorithms["ByteArrayToHexString"] = ByteArrayToHexString;

    Console.WriteLine(" === Long string test");
    foreach (var pair in algorithms) {
        TimeAction(pair.Key + " calculation", 500, () =>
        {
            pair.Value(source);
        });
    }

    Console.WriteLine(" === Many string test");
    foreach (var pair in algorithms) {
        TimeAction(pair.Key + " calculation", 500, () =>
        {
            foreach (var str in manyString)
            {
                pair.Value(str);
            }
        });
    }
}

// Define other methods and classes here
static void TimeAction(string description, int iterations, Action func) {
    var watch = new Stopwatch();
    watch.Start();
    for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {
        func();
    }
    watch.Stop();
    Console.Write(description);
    Console.WriteLine(" Time Elapsed {0} ms", watch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
}

//static byte[] GetRandomBytes(int count) {
//  var bytes = new byte[count];
//  (new Random()).NextBytes(bytes);
//  return bytes;
//}
static Random rand = new Random();
static byte[] GetRandomBytes(int count) {
    var bytes = new byte[count];
    rand.NextBytes(bytes);
    return bytes;
}


static string BitConv(byte[] data)
{
    return BitConverter.ToString(data).Replace("-", string.Empty);
}
static string StringBuilderTest(byte[] data)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(data.Length*2);
    foreach (byte b in data)
        sb.Append(b.ToString("X2"));

    return sb.ToString();
}
static string LinqConcat(byte[] data)
{
    return string.Concat(data.Select(b => b.ToString("X2")).ToArray());
}
static string LinqJoin(byte[] data)
{
    return string.Join("",
        data.Select(
            bin => bin.ToString("X2")
            ).ToArray());
}
static string LinqAgg(byte[] data)
{
    return data.Aggregate(new StringBuilder(),
                               (sb,v)=>sb.Append(v.ToString("X2"))
                              ).ToString();
}
static string ToHex(byte[] bytes)
{
    char[] c = new char[bytes.Length * 2];

    byte b;

    for(int bx = 0, cx = 0; bx < bytes.Length; ++bx, ++cx)
    {
        b = ((byte)(bytes[bx] >> 4));
        c[cx] = (char)(b > 9 ? b - 10 + 'A' : b + '0');

        b = ((byte)(bytes[bx] & 0x0F));
        c[++cx] = (char)(b > 9 ? b - 10 + 'A' : b + '0');
    }

    return new string(c);
}
public static string ByteArrayToHexString(byte[] Bytes)
{
    StringBuilder Result = new StringBuilder(Bytes.Length*2);
    string HexAlphabet = "0123456789ABCDEF";

    foreach (byte B in Bytes)
        {
        Result.Append(HexAlphabet[(int)(B >> 4)]);
        Result.Append(HexAlphabet[(int)(B & 0xF)]);
        }

    return Result.ToString();
}

Also another answer with a similar process, I haven't compared our results yet.

Hex, Linq-fu:

string.Concat(ba.Select(b => b.ToString("X2")).ToArray())

UPDATE with the times

As noted by @RubenBartelink, the code that don't have a conversion of IEnumerable<string> to an array: ba.Select(b => b.ToString("X2")) does not work prior to 4.0, the same code is now working on 4.0.

This code...

byte[] ba = { 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 };

string s = string.Concat(ba.Select(b => b.ToString("X2")));
string t = string.Concat(ba.Select(b => b.ToString("X2")).ToArray());

Console.WriteLine (s);
Console.WriteLine (t);

...prior to .NET 4.0, the output is:

System.Linq.Enumerable+<CreateSelectIterator>c__Iterator10`2[System.Byte,System.String]
010204081020

On .NET 4.0 onwards, string.Concat has an overload that accepts IEnumerable. Hence on 4.0, the above code will have same output for both variables s and t

010204081020
010204081020

Prior to 4.0, ba.Select(b => b.ToString("X2")) goes to overload (object arg0), the way for the IEnumerable<string> to go to a proper overload, i.e. (params string[] values), is we need to convert the IEnumerable<string> to string array. Prior to 4.0, string.Concat has 10 overload functions, on 4.0 it is now 12

Here is another method:

public static string ByteArrayToHexString(byte[] Bytes)
{
    StringBuilder Result = new StringBuilder(Bytes.Length * 2);
    string HexAlphabet = "0123456789ABCDEF";

    foreach (byte B in Bytes)
    {
        Result.Append(HexAlphabet[(int)(B >> 4)]);
        Result.Append(HexAlphabet[(int)(B & 0xF)]);
    }

    return Result.ToString();
}

public static byte[] HexStringToByteArray(string Hex)
{
    byte[] Bytes = new byte[Hex.Length / 2];
    int[] HexValue = new int[] { 0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 
       0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
       0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E, 0x0F };

    for (int x = 0, i = 0; i < Hex.Length; i += 2, x += 1)
    {
        Bytes[x] = (byte)(HexValue[Char.ToUpper(Hex[i + 0]) - '0'] << 4 |
                          HexValue[Char.ToUpper(Hex[i + 1]) - '0']);
    }

    return Bytes;
}

Alternatively, you could pre-build the translation table like so to achieve even faster results:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/blambert/archive/2009/02/22/blambert-codesnip-fast-byte-array-to-hex-string-conversion.aspx

I like using extension methods for conversions like this, even if they just wrap standard library methods. In the case of hexadecimal conversions, I use the following hand-tuned (i.e., fast) algorithms:

public static string ToHex(this byte[] bytes)
{
    char[] c = new char[bytes.Length * 2];

    byte b;

    for(int bx = 0, cx = 0; bx < bytes.Length; ++bx, ++cx) 
    {
        b = ((byte)(bytes[bx] >> 4));
        c[cx] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + 0x37 + 0x20 : b + 0x30);

        b = ((byte)(bytes[bx] & 0x0F));
        c[++cx]=(char)(b > 9 ? b + 0x37 + 0x20 : b + 0x30);
    }

    return new string(c);
}

public static byte[] HexToBytes(this string str)
{
    if (str.Length == 0 || str.Length % 2 != 0)
        return new byte[0];

    byte[] buffer = new byte[str.Length / 2];
    char c;
    for (int bx = 0, sx = 0; bx < buffer.Length; ++bx, ++sx)
    {
        // Convert first half of byte
        c = str[sx];
        buffer[bx] = (byte)((c > '9' ? (c > 'Z' ? (c - 'a' + 10) : (c - 'A' + 10)) : (c - '0')) << 4);

        // Convert second half of byte
        c = str[++sx];
        buffer[bx] |= (byte)(c > '9' ? (c > 'Z' ? (c - 'a' + 10) : (c - 'A' + 10)) : (c - '0'));
    }

    return buffer;
}

Well I don't convert bytes to hex often so I have to say I don't know if there is a better way then this, but here is a way to do it.

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (byte b in myByteArray)
    sb.Append(b.ToString("X2"));

string hexString = sb.ToString();

byte[] to hex string [duplicate]

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byte[] to hex string [duplicate]

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