How can I decode hexadecimal to text (ASCII)?

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4 Answers

Notepad++ has a free plugin that will do hex-to-ASCII and ASCII-to-hex conversion for you called NppConverter.

It has been included in Notepad++ since version v5.9 (2011-03-31). Thus there is no need to explicitly install it. Its functions are in menu Plugins -> Converter:

You may have that backwards. If you're unfamiliar with hex it's best to use an online tool for this or a hex editor. Otherwise it doesn't take long to get a good understanding of the principals involved although I believe these have already been explained here.

If you have perl or perl or perl installed

perl -ne 'print chr hex $1 while /([0-9a-f]{2})/ig

e.g

perl -ne 'print chr hex $1 while /([0-9a-f]{2})/ig file1 file2 file3 ...

or

echo 486578 | perl -ne 'print chr hex $1 while /([0-9a-f]{2})/ig

(Oops, on Windows use " instead of ' )

Here is a simple hex to text chart. It is not complete, for simplicity's sake I am just including characters A-Z

hex - character 41 - A 42 - B 43 - C 44 - D 45 - E 46 - F 47 - G 48 - H 49 - I 4A - J 4B - K 4C - L 4D - M 4E - N 4F - O 50 - P 51 - Q 52 - R 53 - S 54 - T 55 - U 56 - V 57 - W 58 - X 59 - Y 5A - Z

For numbers, take the number's value and add 30 to get the hex code for that number.
Example: 9 + 30 = 39, 0 + 30 = 30, etc.
For lowercase letters, add 20 to the code for the uppercase letter.
Example: A = 41 + 20 = 61 = a

A hex editor, such as Tashcom Software's HexEdit would also help you learn ASCII