VB.NET Hexadecimal to Floating Point / Single (IEEE 754)

CraigG — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:35:00 GMT

A post just came across the forum I frequent regarding Hexadecimal to Floating Point conversion. Strangely there appears to be no direct way to do this in .NET, and the solutions I found were pretty lame and tedious… so it became my mission to get it done the .NET way, and here is the result:

Private Function ConvertHexToSingle(ByVal hexValue As String) As Single

Try

Dim iInputIndex As Integer = 0

Dim iOutputIndex As Integer = 0

Dim bArray(3) As Byte

For iInputIndex = 0 To hexValue.Length - 1 Step 2

bArray(iOutputIndex) = Byte.Parse(hexValue.Chars(iInputIndex) & hexValue.Chars(iInputIndex + 1), Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber)

iOutputIndex += 1

Array.Reverse(bArray)

Return BitConverter.ToSingle(bArray, 0)

Catch ex As Exception

Throw New FormatException("The supplied hex value is either empty or in an incorrect format. Use the following format: 00000000", ex)

End Try

End Function

ConvertHexToSingle("3C000000")

Even though this is just a rough example, it does work, and it can be expanded to support larger types (such as Double) with a couple of small mods.

Craig Gemmill's Blog : Conversion

VB.NET Hexadecimal to Floating Point / Single (IEEE 754)