Convert hex string (char []) to int?

Have you tried strtol()?

strtol - convert string to a long integer

Example:

const char *hexstring = "abcdef0";
int number = (int)strtol(hexstring, NULL, 16);

In case the string representation of the number begins with a 0x prefix, one must should use 0 as base:

const char *hexstring = "0xabcdef0";
int number = (int)strtol(hexstring, NULL, 0);

(It's as well possible to specify an explicit base such as 16, but I wouldn't recommend introducing redundancy.)


Or if you want to have your own implementation, I wrote this quick function as an example:

/**
 * hex2int
 * take a hex string and convert it to a 32bit number (max 8 hex digits)
 */
uint32_t hex2int(char *hex) {
    uint32_t val = 0;
    while (*hex) {
        // get current character then increment
        uint8_t byte = *hex++; 
        // transform hex character to the 4bit equivalent number, using the ascii table indexes
        if (byte >= '0' && byte <= '9') byte = byte - '0';
        else if (byte >= 'a' && byte <='f') byte = byte - 'a' + 10;
        else if (byte >= 'A' && byte <='F') byte = byte - 'A' + 10;    
        // shift 4 to make space for new digit, and add the 4 bits of the new digit 
        val = (val << 4) | (byte & 0xF);
    }
    return val;
}

Something like this could be useful:

char str[] = "0x1800785";
int num;

sscanf(str, "%x", &num);
printf("0x%x %i\n", num, num); 

Read man sscanf


Assuming you mean it's a string, how about strtol?


Use strtol if you have libc available like the top answer suggests. However if you like custom stuff or are on a microcontroller without libc or so, you may want a slightly optimized version without complex branching.

#include <inttypes.h>


/**
 * xtou64
 * Take a hex string and convert it to a 64bit number (max 16 hex digits).
 * The string must only contain digits and valid hex characters.
 */
uint64_t xtou64(const char *str)
{
    uint64_t res = 0;
    char c;

    while ((c = *str++)) {
        char v = (c & 0xF) + (c >> 6) | ((c >> 3) & 0x8);
        res = (res << 4) | (uint64_t) v;
    }

    return res;
} 

The bit shifting magic boils down to: Just use the last 4 bits, but if it is an non digit, then also add 9.