C# hexadecimal to struct

Question

I have different kinds of hexadecimals with a length of 8, like FFFFFFFA (4 bytes 255, 255, 255 and 250 ASCII encoded). Converting this one to binary gives: 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111010 where every digits stands for true (1) or false (0).

It would be nice to have some kind of object in C# where every property represent a binary. In this case a object with 32 bool properties.

Searching on the internet brought me to structs but I can't figure out how to do it.

Concrete questions: How can I convert hexadecimals to a struct and back?

Any direction would be nice!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Thank you for all the comments and samples. I ended up with using BitVector32 because it's more efficient for boolean values and small integers (memory and performance overhead for more info: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.collections.specialized.bitvector32?view=net-6.0)

Struct

// Size = 4 because BitVector32 is 4 bytes
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit, Size = 4, CharSet = CharSet.Ansi)]
public struct Foo
{
    public Foo() {
        // Creates and initializes a BitVector32.
        // 4 bytes
        // 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
        data = new BitVector32(0);

        bit1 = BitVector32.CreateMask();
        bit2 = BitVector32.CreateMask(bit1);
        bit3 = BitVector32.CreateMask(bit2);
        // ...
    }

    [FieldOffset(0)]
    public BitVector32 data;

    private static int bit1;

    private static int bit2;

    private static int bit3;

    public bool Bit1
    {
        get => data[bit1];
        set => data[bit1] = value;
    }

    public bool Bit2
    {
        get => data[bit2];
        set => data[bit2] = value;
    }

    public bool Bit3
    {
        get => data[bit3];
        set => data[bit3] = value;
    }

    public string ToHexString()
    {
        return data.Data.ToString("X");
    }
}

Program

// -- Hex to struct
// FFFFBBFF
// 255      255      187      255
// 11111111 11111111 10111011 11111111
// var bytes = "FFFFBBFF".ToBytes();
var bytes = { 255, 255, 187, 255 };

var handle = GCHandle.Alloc(bytes, GCHandleType.Pinned);
var foo = (Foo)Marshal.PtrToStructure(handle.AddrOfPinnedObject(), typeof(Foo));
handle.Free();

Console.WriteLine(foo.Bit1);
Console.WriteLine(foo.Bit2);
Console.WriteLine(foo.Bit3);
// ...

// -- Or struct to hex
var foo = new Foo();
foo.Bit1 = true;
foo.Bit2 = false;
foo.Bit3 = true;
// ...

Console.WriteLine(foo.ToHexString());

I know it's not perfect, it works for me and I hope it will help others.

Have a nice day!