hex2bin

(PHP >= 5.4.0)

Decodes a hexadecimally encoded binary string

string hex2bin ( string $data )

Decodes a hexadecimally encoded binary string.

Caution

This function does NOT convert a hexadecimal number to a binary number. This can be done using the base_convert() function.

Parameters:

data

Hexadecimal representation of data.

Returns:

Returns the binary representation of the given data or FALSE on failure.

Exception:

If the hexadecimal input string is of odd length or invalid hexadecimal string an E_WARNING level error is thrown.

Changelog:

5.5.1

A warning is thrown if the input string is invalid hexadecimal string.

5.4.4

A warning is thrown if the input string is of odd length. In PHP 5.4.0 the string was silently accepted, but the last byte was truncated.

Examples:

hex2bin() example

<?php
$hex = hex2bin("6578616d706c65206865782064617461");
var_dump($hex);
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

string(16) "example hex data"