splitting a string into a list of 2char strings

Question

I have a hex stream like: 1a2b3c4d5e6f7g but longer I want to split it into 2char hex values in a list, and then convert them to ascii.

Duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/443967/how-to-create-python-bytes-object-from-long-hex-string — Scott Griffiths, Sep 09 '11 at 15:06
A "hex stream" including the character 'g' is a very interesting animal indeed. — Russell Borogove, Sep 09 '11 at 19:06

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 09 '11 at 14:10

5

What about binascii.unhexlify(hexstr)?
See the docs for the binascii module : http://docs.python.org/library/binascii.html

answered Sep 09 '11 at 14:10

gion_13

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+1 `binascii.unhexlify('7573652062696e61736369692e756e6865786c696679')` gives `'use binascii.unhexlify'` – Steven Rumbalski Sep 09 '11 at 14:19

Scott Griffiths · Answer 2 · 2011-09-09T15:05:14.657

3

In Python 2.x you can use binascii.unhexlify:

>>> import binascii
>>> binascii.unhexlify('abcdef0123456789')
'\xab\xcd\xef\x01#Eg\x89'

In Python 3 there's a more elegant method using only the built-in bytes type:

>>> bytes.fromhex('abcdef0123456789')
b'\xab\xcd\xef\x01#Eg\x89'

edited Sep 09 '11 at 15:05

answered Sep 09 '11 at 14:38

Scott Griffiths

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it seems to have also another name: a2b_hex >>>binascii.a2b_hex('abcdef0123456789') Out[0]: '\xab\xcd\xef\x01#Eg\x89' – fabrizioM Sep 09 '11 at 17:40

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 09 '11 at 14:13

One liner:

a = "1a2b3c"
print ''.join(chr(int(a[i] + a[i+1], 16)) for i in xrange(0, len(a), 2))

Explanation:

xrange(0, len(a), 2) # gives alternating indecis over the string
a[i] + a[i+1]        # the pair of characters as a string
int(..., 16)         # the string interpreted as a hex number
chr(...)             # the character corresponding to the given hex number
''.join()            # obtain a single string from the sequence of characters

splitting a string into a list of 2char strings

3 Answers3