How can I convert from hex to plain ASCII in Python?

Note that, for example, I want to convert “0x7061756c” to “paul”.

A slightly simpler solution:

>>> "7061756c".decode("hex")
'paul'

No need to import any library:

>>> bytearray.fromhex("7061756c").decode()
'paul'

>>> txt = '7061756c'
>>> ''.join([chr(int(''.join(c), 16)) for c in zip(txt[0::2],txt[1::2])])
'paul'                                                                          

i’m just having fun, but the important parts are:

>>> int('0a',16)         # parse hex
10
>>> ''.join(['a', 'b'])  # join characters
'ab'
>>> 'abcd'[0::2]         # alternates
'ac'
>>> zip('abc', '123')    # pair up
[('a', '1'), ('b', '2'), ('c', '3')]        
>>> chr(32)              # ascii to character
' '

will look at binascii now…

>>> print binascii.unhexlify('7061756c')
paul

cool (and i have no idea why other people want to make you jump through hoops before they’ll help).

In Python 2:

>>> "7061756c".decode("hex")
'paul'

In Python 3:

>>> bytes.fromhex('7061756c').decode('utf-8')
'paul'

Here’s my solution when working with hex integers and not hex strings:

def convert_hex_to_ascii(h):
    chars_in_reverse = []
    while h != 0x0:
        chars_in_reverse.append(chr(h & 0xFF))
        h = h >> 8

    chars_in_reverse.reverse()
    return ''.join(chars_in_reverse)

print convert_hex_to_ascii(0x7061756c)

Alternatively, you can also do this …

Python 2 Interpreter

print "\x70 \x61 \x75 \x6c"

Example

user@linux:~# python
Python 2.7.14+ (default, Mar 13 2018, 15:23:44) 
[GCC 7.3.0] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> print "\x70 \x61 \x75 \x6c"
p a u l
>>> exit()
user@linux:~# 

or

Python 2 One-Liner

python -c 'print "\x70 \x61 \x75 \x6c"'

Example

user@linux:~# python -c 'print "\x70 \x61 \x75 \x6c"'
p a u l
user@linux:~# 

Python 3 Interpreter

user@linux:~$ python3
Python 3.6.9 (default, Apr 18 2020, 01:56:04) 
[GCC 8.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> print("\x70 \x61 \x75 \x6c")
p a u l

>>> print("\x70\x61\x75\x6c")
paul

Python 3 One-Liner

python -c 'print("\x70 \x61 \x75 \x6c")'

Example

user@linux:~$ python -c 'print("\x70 \x61 \x75 \x6c")'
p a u l

user@linux:~$ python -c 'print("\x70\x61\x75\x6c")'
paul

Tested in Python 3.3.2 There are many ways to accomplish this, here’s one of the shortest, using only python-provided stuff:

import base64
hex_data ='57696C6C20796F7520636F6E76657274207468697320484558205468696E6720696E746F20415343494920666F72206D653F2E202E202E202E506C656565656173652E2E2E212121'
ascii_string = str(base64.b16decode(hex_data))[2:-1]
print (ascii_string)

Of course, if you don’t want to import anything, you can always write your own code. Something very basic like this:

ascii_string = ''
x = 0
y = 2
l = len(hex_data)
while y <= l:
    ascii_string += chr(int(hex_data[x:y], 16))
    x += 2
    y += 2
print (ascii_string)

b''.fromhex('7061756c')

use it without delimiter