Question

byte[] test = Form1.StrToByteArray(“simpletext”);
string encoded_text = BitConverter.ToString(test).Replace(“-“, “”).ToLowerInvariant();
textBox1.Text = encoded_text;//73696d706c6574657874

as from this line “73696d706c6574657874” to get back “simpletext” ??

//StrToByteArray()

 public static byte[] StrToByteArray(string str)
 {
            System.Text.ASCIIEncoding encoding = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();
            return encoding.GetBytes(str);
 }

Answer 1

Do you absolutely have to use hex to start with? One slightly more efficient (and reversible with framework methods) option would be to use base 64:

string base64 = Convert.ToBase64String(test);
byte[] originalBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(base64);
string text = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(originalBytes);

I personally wouldn’t suggest using ASCII as your encoding, however – UTF-8 will work the same way for ASCII characters, but allow all of Unicode to be encoded.

If you do have to use hex, you’ll need a method to parse hex – I have an example here.