Convert from ASCII string encoded in Hex to plain ASCII?

Question

How can I convert from hex to plain ASCII in Python?

Note that, for example, I want to convert "0x7061756c" to "paul".

Solution 1

A slightly simpler solution:

>>> "7061756c".decode("hex")
'paul'

Solution 2

No need to import any library:

>>> bytearray.fromhex("7061756c").decode()
'paul'

Solution 3

>>> txt = '7061756c'
>>> ''.join([chr(int(''.join(c), 16)) for c in zip(txt[0::2],txt[1::2])])
'paul'                                                                          

i'm just having fun, but the important parts are:

>>> int('0a',16)         # parse hex
10
>>> ''.join(['a', 'b'])  # join characters
'ab'
>>> 'abcd'[0::2]         # alternates
'ac'
>>> zip('abc', '123')    # pair up
[('a', '1'), ('b', '2'), ('c', '3')]        
>>> chr(32)              # ascii to character
' '

will look at binascii now...

>>> print binascii.unhexlify('7061756c')
paul

cool (and i have no idea why other people want to make you jump through hoops before they'll help).

Solution 4

In Python 2:

>>> "7061756c".decode("hex")
'paul'

In Python 3:

>>> bytes.fromhex('7061756c').decode('utf-8')
'paul'

Solution 5

b''.fromhex('7061756c')

use it without delimiter

View more solutions

Comments

[JanusFox81]

I've tried a bunch of stuff I found here: docs.python.org/library/binascii.html

[Vincent Savard]

With the help of the link you just gave us, I found the function you were looking for. What exactly did you try and why didn't it work?

[JanusFox81]

I tried the following: >>> binascii.b2a_hqx("0x7061756c") '-(Jh-$Ba0c8fB`' >>> binascii.b2a_uu("0x7061756c") "*,'@W,#8Q-S4V8P \n" >>> binascii.b2a_base64("0x7061756c") 'MHg3MDYxNzU2Yw==\n' >>> binascii.b2a_qp("0x7061756c") '0x7061756c' >>> binascii.b2a_hex("0x7061756c") '30783730363137353663' >>> binascii.b2a_hex(0x7061756c) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: must be string or buffer, not int >>>

[JanusFox81]

None of them worked, because none of them returned 'paul'.

[Admin]

Don't you mean "7-bit" ASCII? (Which is sort of silly because ASCII is only 7-bits.) A GUID is 128bits...

[jfs]

there is no .decode('hex') on Python 3. .decode('hex') uses binascii.unhexlify() on Python 2.

[cjm]

Thanks for pointing that out, I'm not as familiar with Python 3. This solution also won't work in 1 as far as I know.

[Mark Lakata]

+1 for a useful example, but you are not converting "hex" as the input but you are converting any integer to a hex string. You code will work equally as well with print convert_hex_to_ascii(123456).

[Mark Evans]

codecs.decode("7061756c", "hex") works for Python 2 and Python 3. But it returns a bytes() string in Python 3. But that's reasonable for an ASCII string.

[Jona]

Best solution for me (works with python 3) as it even accepts spaces : bytearray.fromhex("70 61 75 6C").decode()

[grambo]

bytearray.fromhex("70e4756c").decode(encoding="Latin1") 'päul' For those of us playing in binary, the extended characters choke on the default utf-8 decode, other than that, this is the most portable answer I see! Thanks!

[tripleee]

Of course you have to know the actual encoding of the data if it is to be interpreted as text. Using 'latin-1' will get rid of any errors but may well produce complete gibberish if the text is not actually Latin-1.

[rjferguson]

This works fine without the spaces as well, and works fine in python3 with print().

[Admin]

Yes, I put it on purpose to make it easier to see. Let me update the answer with Python 3 as well.

[xuiqzy]

In the interpreter, even the repr of the bytearray that is returned without .decode() is human readable, so for quickly checking something, you might get away without the .decode().

[Martijn Pieters]

This is no different from bytes.fromhex() or bytearray.fromhex(). For both these types, .fromhex() is a classmethod.

[maxschlepzig]

or better bytes.fromhex("7061756c").decode() since you don't need a mutable array and it's less to type.

[Admin]

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.

[Ulf Gjerdingen]

why can't i convert the value 9c ?