Encode text or uploaded files as lowercase hexadecimal, or decode hex back to binary.
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Encode data as hexadecimal or decode hexadecimal text back to binary data.
Layout of the encoded output. Plain hex is one continuous run of digits. Hexdump adds an offset column and a readable text column, the way the hexdump command shows a file. Applies to Encode.
Text placed between the byte groups, so a space gives 66 6f 6f. In the hexdump layout it separates the bytes inside a group instead. Applies to Encode.
Results appear here.
Hex writes each byte as exactly two characters drawn from the digits 0 to 9 and the letters A to F. A 10-byte input becomes 20 hexadecimal characters. This tool writes lowercase by default and accepts either case when decoding.
0x, \x or %, written in front of a group so you can paste the hex straight into code. The hexdump layout ignores it.Because you can read it. The mapping is positional and fixed: byte three of the file is always characters five and six of the output. Nothing shifts, nothing is grouped across boundaries, and you can point at a spot in the middle of a hex dump and know exactly which byte you are looking at.
That property is why hex is the standard way to show hashes, checksums, memory dumps, file signatures, colour values, and anything else a person needs to compare by eye. Base64 is denser and completely opaque to that kind of inspection.
Base64 costs about a third in overhead against hex's 100 percent, and is the better pick when nobody reads the output. Base32 sits between the two and survives case-mangling. Ascii85 is denser than all of them.
For eyeballing the first bytes of an unknown file, hex remains the most direct option.
Hex gets confused with hashing because hashes are nearly always shown in hex. The hash does the fingerprinting. The hex only makes the result printable, and on its own it protects nothing.
Because two characters map to exactly one byte, valid hex always has an even length. An odd number of characters means something was truncated.
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