Hex -> Text Converter

Convert between Hexadecimal strings and plain text using various character sets.

About Hex <-> Text Conversion

This tool converts between hexadecimal (hex) strings and plain text. Hexadecimal is a base-16 numeral system often used in computing as a human-friendly representation of binary-coded values. Text can be encoded into a hex string, and a hex string representing character codes can be decoded back into text. The tool supports various character sets for decoding, as the same hex sequence can represent different characters depending on the encoding used.

Why Use This Tool?

This converter is useful for: viewing or editing the raw byte representation of text strings; encoding text for systems that require hex input (e.g., some hardware interfaces or specific data protocols); decoding hex strings received from such systems back into readable text; or understanding how different character encodings represent text as byte sequences (hex).

Example Use Cases

  • Encoding a configuration string like 'Hello World' into its hex representation (e.g., '48656C6C6F20576F726C64' for UTF-8).
  • Decoding a hex string from a data log or network packet, like 'E4BDA0E5A5BD', back to its original text (e.g., '你好' if it was UTF-8 encoded).
  • Converting text to hex to be used in programming for byte array initializations.
  • Investigating character encoding issues by comparing the hex output of a string encoded with different charsets.

Pro Tips

  • Character Set for Decoding: When converting hex to text, choosing the correct 'Text Character Set' is crucial. If the hex string represents text encoded in something other than UTF-8 (e.g., Windows-1252), you must select the appropriate charset for accurate decoding.
  • Hex Input: Ensure your hex input string contains only valid hexadecimal characters (0-9, A-F, a-f) and has an even length (representing whole bytes). The tool typically ignores spaces or common prefixes like '0x' if present.
  • Output Formatting (Text to Hex): When converting text to hex, you can choose to output the hex in lowercase, uppercase, or uppercase with spaces between bytes for readability.