Question

When I call -description on an NSData object, I see a pretty Hex string of the NSData object’s bytes like:

<f6e7cd28 0fc5b5d4 88f8394b af216506 bc1bba86 4d5b483d>

I’d like to get this representation of the data (minus the lt/gt quotes) into an in-memory NSString so I can work with it.. I’d prefer not to call -[NSData description] and then just trim the lt/gt quotes (because I assume that is not a guaranteed aspect of NSData‘s public interface and is subject change in the future).

What’s the simplest way to get this representation of an NSData object into an NSString object (other than calling -description)?

Answer 1

Keep in mind that any String(format: ...) solution will be terribly slow (for large data)

NSData *data = ...;
NSUInteger capacity = data.length * 2;
NSMutableString *sbuf = [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:capacity];
const unsigned char *buf = data.bytes;
NSInteger i;
for (i=0; i<data.length; ++i) {
  [sbuf appendFormat:@"%02X", (NSUInteger)buf[i]];
}

If you need something more performant try this:

static inline char itoh(int i) {
    if (i > 9) return 'A' + (i - 10);
    return '0' + i;
}

NSString * NSDataToHex(NSData *data) {
    NSUInteger i, len;
    unsigned char *buf, *bytes;
    
    len = data.length;
    bytes = (unsigned char*)data.bytes;
    buf = malloc(len*2);
    
    for (i=0; i<len; i++) {
        buf[i*2] = itoh((bytes[i] >> 4) & 0xF);
        buf[i*2+1] = itoh(bytes[i] & 0xF);
    }
    
    return [[NSString alloc] initWithBytesNoCopy:buf
                                          length:len*2
                                        encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding
                                    freeWhenDone:YES];
}

Swift version

private extension Data {
    var hexadecimalString: String {
        let charA: UInt8 = 0x61
        let char0: UInt8 = 0x30
        func byteToChar(_ b: UInt8) -> Character {
            Character(UnicodeScalar(b > 9 ? charA + b - 10 : char0 + b))
        }
        let hexChars = flatMap {[
            byteToChar(($0 >> 4) & 0xF),
            byteToChar($0 & 0xF)
        ]}
        return String(hexChars)
    }
}