Convert hex string (char []) to int?

Question

I have a char[] that contains a value such as \"0x1800785\" but the function I want to give the value to requires an int, how can I convert this to an int? I have searched a

Answer 1

One quick & dirty solution:

// makes a number from two ascii hexa characters
int ahex2int(char a, char b){

    a = (a <= '9') ? a - '0' : (a & 0x7) + 9;
    b = (b <= '9') ? b - '0' : (b & 0x7) + 9;

    return (a << 4) + b;
}

You have to be sure your input is correct, no validation included (one could say it is C). Good thing it is quite compact, it works with both 'A' to 'F' and 'a' to 'f'.

The approach relies on the position of alphabet characters in the ASCII table, let's peek e.g. to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#/media/File:USASCII_code_chart.png). Long story short, the numbers are below the characters, so the numeric characters (0 to 9) are easily converted by subtracting the code for zero. The alphabetic characters (A to F) are read by zeroing other than last three bits (effectively making it work with either upper- or lowercase), subtracting one (because after the bit masking, the alphabet starts on position one) and adding ten (because A to F represent 10th to 15th value in hexadecimal code). Finally, we need to combine the two digits that form the lower and upper nibble of the encoded number.

Here we go with same approach (with minor variations):

#include 

// takes a null-terminated string of hexa characters and tries to 
// convert it to numbers
long ahex2num(unsigned char *in){

    unsigned char *pin = in; // lets use pointer to loop through the string
    long out = 0;  // here we accumulate the result

    while(*pin != 0){
        out <<= 4; // we have one more input character, so 
                   // we shift the accumulated interim-result one order up
        out +=  (*pin < 'A') ? *pin & 0xF : (*pin & 0x7) + 9; // add the new nibble
        pin++; // go ahead
    }

    return out;
}

// main function will test our conversion fn
int main(void) {

    unsigned char str[] = "1800785";  // no 0x prefix, please
    long num;

    num = ahex2num(str);  // call the function

    printf("Input: %s\n",str);  // print input string
    printf("Output: %x\n",num);  // print the converted number back as hexa
    printf("Check: %ld = %ld \n",num,0x1800785);  // check the numeric values matches

    return 0;
}