What is hexadecimal encoding?

Hexadecimal (base-16) is a number system that uses digits 0-9 and letters A-F. Each hex digit represents exactly 4 bits, so one byte (8 bits) is represented by exactly two hex digits. Hexadecimal is widely used in computing because it provides a compact, human-readable way to represent binary data. For example, the letter 'A' in ASCII is 0x41 in hex.

Common use cases for text to hex conversion

Text to hex conversion is essential in web development for URL encoding and HTML color codes, in network analysis for inspecting packet data, in cryptography for viewing hash outputs and encryption keys, and in low-level programming for memory debugging. It is also used in CSS to define colors (like #FF5733) and in protocol analysis.

// JavaScript — text to hex
function textToHex(text) {
  return [...text]
    .map(c => c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16).padStart(2, '0'))
    .join(' ');
}
textToHex('Hi'); // '48 69'

# Python — text to hex
def text_to_hex(text):
    return ' '.join(f'{ord(c):02x}' for c in text)
text_to_hex('Hi')  # '48 69'