Converting from hex to binary without losing leading 0's using C#

Question

I want to convert a hexadecimal to its equivalent binary. The code I have tried is as below:

string hex_addr = "0001A000";
string bin_value = Convert.ToString(Convert.ToInt32(hex_addr, 16), 2);

This will truncate the leading zeros. How do I achieve this?

As far as I can tell this code actually works fine when string hex_addr = "0001A000"; It outputs, "11010000000000000". It doesn't make any difference whether the hex value has leading 0s or not. — Chris Wallis, Nov 26 '12 at 07:57

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

Try following (from the SO link)

private static readonly Dictionary<char, string> hexCharacterToBinary = new Dictionary<char, string> {
    { '0', "0000" },
    { '1', "0001" },
    { '2', "0010" },
    { '3', "0011" },
    { '4', "0100" },
    { '5', "0101" },
    { '6', "0110" },
    { '7', "0111" },
    { '8', "1000" },
    { '9', "1001" },
    { 'a', "1010" },
    { 'b', "1011" },
    { 'c', "1100" },
    { 'd', "1101" },
    { 'e', "1110" },
    { 'f', "1111" }
};

public string HexStringToBinary(string hex) {
    StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
    foreach (char c in hex) {
        // This will crash for non-hex characters. You might want to handle that differently.
        result.Append(hexCharacterToBinary[char.ToLower(c)]);
    }
    return result.ToString();
}

I had used this in one of my projects. – Tilak Nov 26 '12 at 13:02 — Tilak, Nov 26 '12 at 13:02

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 03 '14 at 15:23

0

Just use PadLeft( , ):

string strTemp = System.Convert.ToString(buf, 2).PadLeft(8, '0');

Here buf is your string hex_addr, strTemp is the result. 8 is the length which you can change to your desired length of binary string.

answered Mar 03 '14 at 15:23

malajisi

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

0

You may need to PadLeft as suggested in this link

bin_value.PadLeft(32, '0')

edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

Community

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answered May 20 '14 at 16:09

Justin Samuel

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Converting from hex to binary without losing leading 0's using C#

3 Answers3