Convert hex value string to Binary string

Question

I want to convert 000000000000000117c80378b8da0e33559b5997f2ad55e2f7d18ec1975b9717 hex value to it's binary format (to a string of binary), but following code throws an exception if either value being too big or too small. Why is that?

Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
        Dim binstring As String
        Dim hexstring As String = "000000000000000117c80378b8da0e33559b5997f2ad55e2f7d18ec1975b9717"
        binstring = Convert.ToString(Convert.ToInt32(hexstring, 16), 2)

        T5.Text = binstring
    End Sub

Your code includes this expression Convert.ToInt32(hexstring, 16) which tries to convert your hex string to a 32-bit integer. The string in your example converts to a number that is far more than 32 bits. — Blackwood
– Blackwood, Commented Jun 18, 2016 at 14:46

user94559 · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-18 14:47:00Z

1

Convert.ToInt32 converts to, unsurprisingly, an Int32.

The maximum value of an Int32 is Int32.MaxValue, which is 2,147,483,647.

The number in your code, 0x117c80378b8da0e33559b5997f2ad55e2f7d18ec1975b9717, is much larger than that (6,860,217,587,554,922,525,607,992,740,653,361,396,256,930,700,588,249,487,127 in decimal), so it doesn't come close to fitting.

EDIT

You didn't ask for help actually converting this, but here's a hint: each hex digit represents four binary digits (because 16 is 2^4). You can convert each digit of the hexadecimal individually and just concatenate them. In other words, 0xF1 = 11110001 in binary, because 0xF = 1111 and 0x1 = 0001. Just be careful to keep the trailing zeros you need.

answered Jun 18, 2016 at 14:47

user94559

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Comments

Blackwood · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-18 18:20:59Z

1

As I said in my comment on your question, your hex string is too long to convert to a 32-bit integer, which your code is trying to do. I would approach this by looping through the characters of the hex string and converting each to a binary string of length 4 (padded on the left with "0").

Dim hexstring As String = "000000000000000117c80378b8da0e33559b5997f2ad55e2f7d18ec1975b9717"
Dim bin As New Text.StringBuilder
For Each ch As Char In hexstring
    bin.Append(Convert.ToString(Convert.ToInt32(ch, 16), 2).PadLeft(4, "0"c))
Next
T5.Text = bin.ToString

edited Jun 18, 2016 at 18:20

answered Jun 18, 2016 at 14:58

Blackwood

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