Question

Question: I need to convert a string into hex and then format the hex output.

tmp = b"test"
test = binascii.hexlify(tmp)
print(test) 

output: b’74657374′

---

I want to format this hex output to look like this: 74:65:73:74

I have hit a road block and not sure where to start. I did think of converting the output to a string again and then trying to format it but there must be an easier way.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

==========

OS: Windows 7

tmp = "test"
hex = str(binascii.hexlify(tmp), 'ascii')
print(hex)

formatted_hex = ':'.join(hex[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(hex), 2))
print(formatted_hex

[Error]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\pkg\scripts\Hex\hex.py”, line 24, in
hex = str(binascii.hexlify(tmp), ‘ascii’)
TypeError: ‘str’ does not support the buffer interface

This code only works when using tmp = b’test’ I need be able use tmp = importString in fashion as I’m passing another value to it from a file order for my snippet to work. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

hex = str(binascii.hexlify(tmp), 'ascii')
formatted_hex = ':'.join(hex[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(hex), 2))

This makes use of the step argument to range() which specifies that instead of giving every integer in the range, it should only give every 2nd integer (for step=2).

---

>>> tmp = "test"
>>> import binascii
>>> hex = str(binascii.hexlify(tmp), 'ascii')
>>> formatted_hex = ':'.join(hex[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(hex), 2))
>>> formatted_hex
'74:65:73:74'