Converting a hex string to a byte array

Question

What is the best way to convert a variable length hex string e.g. \"01A1\" to a byte array containing that data.

i.e converting this:

st         


        

Answer 1

If you want to use OpenSSL to do it, there is a nifty trick I found:

BIGNUM *input = BN_new();
int input_length = BN_hex2bn(&input, argv[2]);
input_length = (input_length + 1) / 2; // BN_hex2bn() returns number of hex digits
unsigned char *input_buffer = (unsigned char*)malloc(input_length);
retval = BN_bn2bin(input, input_buffer);

Just be sure to strip off any leading '0x' to the string.