How to turn a hex string into an unsigned char array?

Question

For example, I have a cstring \"E8 48 D8 FF FF 8B 0D\" (including spaces) which needs to be converted into the equivalent unsigned char array {0xE8,0x48,0

Answer 1

If you know the length of the string to be parsed beforehand (e.g. you are reading something from /proc) you can use sscanf with the 'hh' type modifier, which specifies that the next conversion is one of diouxX and the pointer to store it will be either signed char or unsigned char.

// example: ipv6 address as seen in /proc/net/if_inet6:
char myString[] = "fe80000000000000020c29fffe01bafb";
unsigned char addressBytes[16];
sscanf(myString, "%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx
%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx%02hhx", &addressBytes[0],
&addressBytes[1], &addressBytes[2], &addressBytes[3], &addressBytes[4], 
&addressBytes[5], &addressBytes[6], &addressBytes[7], &addressBytes[8], 
&addressBytes[9], &addressBytes[10], addressBytes[11],&addressBytes[12],
&addressBytes[13], &addressBytes[14], &addressBytes[15]);

int i;
for (i = 0; i < 16; i++){
    printf("addressBytes[%d] = %02x\n", i, addressBytes[i]);
}

Output:

addressBytes[0] = fe
addressBytes[1] = 80
addressBytes[2] = 00
addressBytes[3] = 00
addressBytes[4] = 00
addressBytes[5] = 00
addressBytes[6] = 00
addressBytes[7] = 00
addressBytes[8] = 02
addressBytes[9] = 0c
addressBytes[10] = 29
addressBytes[11] = ff
addressBytes[12] = fe
addressBytes[13] = 01
addressBytes[14] = ba
addressBytes[15] = fb