Regular Expressions Cookbook

6.2. Hexadecimal Numbers

Problem

You want to find hexadecimal numbers in a larger body of text, or check whether a string variable holds a hexadecimal number.

Solution

Find any hexadecimal number in a larger body of text:

\b[0-9A-F]+\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

\b[0-9A-Fa-f]+\b

Regex options: None

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Check if a text string holds just a hexadecimal number:

\A[0-9A-F]+\Z

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

^[0-9A-F]+$

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python

Find a hexadecimal number with a 0x prefix:

\b0x[0-9A-F]+\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Find a hexadecimal number with an &H prefix:

&H[0-9A-F]+\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Find a hexadecimal number with an H suffix:

\b[0-9A-F]+H\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Find a hexadecimal byte value or 8-bit number:

\b[0-9A-F]{2}\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Find a hexadecimal word value or 16-bit number:

\b[0-9A-F]{4}\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Find a hexadecimal double word value or 32-bit number:

\b[0-9A-F]{8}\b ...