How Do You Convert Hexadecimal to Binary in Python?

To convert a hexadecimal number to binary in Python, you can follow these steps:

1. Convert the hexadecimal number to an integer.
2. Convert the integer to binary.

Method 1: Using bin() function

The easiest way to convert a hexadecimal string to binary is by first converting the hexadecimal number to an integer using int(), and then converting that integer to a binary string using the bin() function.

Example:

# Hexadecimal string
hex_value = "1A3F"

# Convert hexadecimal to integer
decimal_value = int(hex_value, 16)

# Convert integer to binary (removes '0b' prefix)
binary_value = bin(decimal_value)[2:]

print(f"Hexadecimal: {hex_value}")
print(f"Binary: {binary_value}")

Output:

Hexadecimal: 1A3F
Binary: 1101000111111

Explanation:

• int(hex_value, 16) converts the hexadecimal string 1A3F to its decimal integer equivalent (6719).
• bin(decimal_value)[2:] converts the integer 6719 to binary (0b1101000111111), and the [2:] slices off the 0b prefix that Python uses to indicate binary numbers.

Method 2: Using a Custom Function (Manual Conversion)

If you want to implement the conversion manually, you can iterate through the hexadecimal string and convert each hexadecimal digit to its binary equivalent.

Example:

def hex_to_bin(hex_value):
    # Create a dictionary for hexadecimal to binary mapping
    hex_to_bin_map = {
        '0': '0000', '1': '0001', '2': '0010', '3': '0011',
        '4': '0100', '5': '0101', '6': '0110', '7': '0111',
        '8': '1000', '9': '1001', 'A': '1010', 'B': '1011',
        'C': '1100', 'D': '1101', 'E': '1110', 'F': '1111'
    }
    
    # Convert each hex digit to its binary equivalent
    binary_value = ''.join(hex_to_bin_map[digit] for digit in hex_value.upper())
    
    return binary_value

# Example usage
hex_value = "1A3F"
binary_value = hex_to_bin(hex_value)

print(f"Hexadecimal: {hex_value}")
print(f"Binary: {binary_value}")

Output:

Hexadecimal: 1A3F
Binary: 0001101000111111

Explanation:

• The hex_to_bin_map dictionary maps each hexadecimal digit to its corresponding 4-bit binary representation.
• The join() method is used to concatenate the binary strings for each hexadecimal digit in the string.

Method 3: Using format() Function

You can also use the format() function in Python to convert the integer to binary.

Example:

# Hexadecimal string
hex_value = "1A3F"

# Convert hexadecimal to integer
decimal_value = int(hex_value, 16)

# Convert integer to binary using format function
binary_value = format(decimal_value, 'b')

print(f"Hexadecimal: {hex_value}")
print(f"Binary: {binary_value}")

Output:

Hexadecimal: 1A3F
Binary: 1101000111111

Explanation:

• int(hex_value, 16) converts the hexadecimal string to an integer.
• format(decimal_value, 'b') converts the integer to a binary string without the 0b prefix.

Summary:

• Method 1: Convert using int() to get the decimal equivalent, then use bin() to convert to binary.
• Method 2: Manually map each hex digit to binary using a dictionary.
• Method 3: Use format() to convert the integer to binary.

All three methods are valid and depend on the preference for built-in functions versus manual mapping.