char[] to hex string exercise

Question

Below is my current char* to hex string function. I wrote it as an exercise in bit manipulation. It takes ~7ms on a AMD Athlon MP 2800+ to hexify a 10 million byte array. Is

Answer 1

I assume this is Windows+IA32.
Try to use short int instead of the two hexadecimal letters.

short int hex_table[256] = {'0'*256+'0', '1'*256+'0', '2'*256+'0', ..., 'E'*256+'F', 'F'*256+'F'};
unsigned short int* pszHex = &str[0];

stick = clock();

for (const unsigned char* pChar = _pArray; pChar != pEnd; pChar++) 
    *pszHex++ = hex_table[*pChar];

etick = clock();