Question

I have some Perl code that I need to transpose in Java. In this code I have to deal with Perl’s pack. Is there an equivalent function in Java? The Perl code looks something like this:

$somevar = pack "H*", $vartopack;

Answer 1

Perl’s pack / unpack functions are a highly versatile conversion utility with its own format syntax (used in H* here, which makes it take an arbitrarily long hex string as input) of which there is no direct equivalent in the Java world. However, to translate…

$somevar = pack "H*", $vartoconvert;

…to Java, you can for example use:

byte[] somevar = javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter.parseHexBinary(vartoconvert);

For more information read the DatatypeConverter class reference from Javadocs.