Groovy Goodness: Converting Byte Array to Hex String

To convert a byte[] array to a String we can simply use the new String(byte[]) constructor. But if the array contains non-printable bytes we don't get a good representation. In Groovy we can use the method encodeHex() to transform a byte[] array to a hex String value. The byte elements are converted to their hexadecimal equivalents.

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final byte[] printable = [109, 114, 104, 97, 107, 105]   // array with non-printable bytes 6, 27 (ACK, ESC) final byte[] nonprintable = [109, 114, 6, 27, 104, 97, 107, 105]     assert new String(printable) == 'mrhaki' assert new String(nonprintable) != 'mr  haki'     // encodeHex() returns a Writable final Writable printableHex = printable.encodeHex() assert printableHex.toString() == '6d7268616b69' final nonprintableHex = nonprintable.encodeHex().toString() assert nonprintableHex == '6d72061b68616b69'     // Convert back assert nonprintableHex.decodeHex() == nonprintable

Code written with Groovy 2.2.1