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how to read in a number in hex and convert it to binary

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg105176] how to read in a number in hex and convert it to binary
• From: "Michael O&#39;Hanrahan" <hanrahan398 at yahoo.co.uk>
• Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:53:11 -0500 (EST)

Hi, newbie question I'm afraid, but I couldn't work out how to do this from the help. I'm using Mathematica 5.2.

I've got a textfile containing about 30 thousand 256-digit numbers in hex. I need to read them in and work on them one by one. Reading them is fine using

Read["hello.txt",Expression]

Then I would like to turn each number into a fixed-length binary number, using something like

IntegerDigits[16^^p, 2, 27]

The problem is, this doesn't work. The argument of ^^ seems to need to be an actual number in hex, e.g. 16^A12B3, rather than a variable.

Given that essentially ^^ is a two-argument function, is there a way to express it as such in Mathematica?

I'm even having trouble getting the input to be accepted as a number at all . Replacing "Expression" (or "String") with "Number" or "Integer" doesn't work.

Will be grateful for any help with this.
Thanks!
Michael

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: how to read in a number in hex and convert it to binary
    • From: Carl Woll <carlw@wolfram.com>
  • Re: how to read in a number in hex and convert it to
    • From: DrMajorBob <btreat1@austin.rr.com>