Adding a 0x Prefix to Hex Values?
 

Hey Folks,

First, off I apologise if this is not the right forum to post this question. I wasn't sure what the "best fit" would be.

I’ve a table with 3200 hex entries in a spreadsheet but they’re all missing the “0x” prefix. I’d like to add that in front of each entry. Do you know how to?

In other words consider the following 2 x 3 table:

[HTML]02 00 FF
EE FA DA[/HTML]

I’d like to make it look like this:

[HTML]0x02 0x00 0xFF
0xEE 0xFA 0xDA[/HTML]

There should be some text editor which does that – right? I’ve been trying to look for one but with no luck so far.

Thanks for your time,

Vinit

Almost any editor one thinks of that supports regular expressions will do the trick. That would be many. The editor in VC++ 2005, for instance, is among them.

Find any text editor that can use regular expressions (I'd recommend Notepad++ for Windows, TextWrangler for Mac OS or Kate for Linux), and tell it to replace ([0-9A-Fa-f]{2}) with 0x\1. This should do it.

For more information on regular expressions, check out Regular-Expressions.info.

* DaWei,

Thank you for the reply. I don't have VC++ 2005. I was hoping there would be something free or bundled with Windows that could do the trick.

* Ooble,

Thanks for your contribution. I'll try to get Notepad++. I'm not sure I understand what you wrote:

[HTML]([0-9A-Fa-f]{2}) with 0x\1[/HTML]

but it seems to be some kind of a command line argument. I'll check out the link you sent too and see if it makes sense.

Thanks much,

Vinit

* Ooble,

Now, I understand what you wrote. Essentially, you're saying find any hex number that is two digits long that may be of a mixed case and prefix it with it a "0x". I'm not sure what the "\1" means, yet but I'm trying to understand that.

I have Notepad++ installed and I'm trying to figure out how or where exactly to type in your command.

Vinit

I think VC++ 2005 is free, from the MS website

\1 is replaced by the matched text. So if the pattern matched by [0-9A-Fa-f]{2} was FA, 0x\1 would become 0xFA.

* kruptof,

Thank you.

Yes, it is indeed free. However, one has to uninstall the 2.0 Net framework before installing it which I can't do. :-(

Vinit

* titaniumdecoy,

Thanks for your input.

Hmm - I still don't get what the "\1" does, really. I understand what you're saying with regards to "FA" becoming "0xFA" but what if I had "0x\2", instead, for example? What would "FA" become then?

Vinit

OK, so now that I'm getting clearer with this, I fired up Notepad++, opened my text file, and then went to:

Search --> Replace...

In the "Find what" field, I typed in:

([0-9A-Fa-f]{2})

and in the "Replace with" field, I typed in:

0x\1

However, I get a dialog box with the following message which says "Can't find the word". Am I missing something vital?

Vinit