binasciiunhexlifyhexstr

Binascii.unhexlify is a function in Python’s standard library module binascii that converts a hex-encoded string into its binary data form. It is commonly used to decode data that has been represented in hexadecimal for storage or transmission.

Usage and behavior

The function takes a hex string or a bytes-like object containing hexadecimal digits (0-9, A-F, a-f) and returns the corresponding binary data as a bytes object. The input should have an even number of hex digits; otherwise, it raises binascii.Error. If the input contains non-hex characters, a binascii.Error is also raised. Binascii.unhexlify is effectively the programmatic way to translate pairs of hex digits into their byte values.

Relationship to other functions

Binascii.unhexlify is often used alongside binascii.hexlify, which performs the inverse operation by converting binary data to a hex representation. In Python, there is also an alias a2b_hex that serves as an alternate name for unhexlify.

Example

import binascii

binascii.unhexlify('4a4f') # returns b'JO'

binascii.unhexlify(b'4a4f') # also returns b'JO'

Notes

This function is part of the standard library, requiring no external dependencies. It is suitable for decoding hex dumps, processing data represented in hex form, or integrating with systems that transmit binary data as hex strings.