In Java, how do I convert a byte array to a string of hex digits while keeping leading zeros? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I've been looking for the same thing ... some good ideas here, but I ran a few micro benchmarks. I found the following to be the fastest (modified from Ayman's above and about 2x as fast, and about 50% faster than Steve's just above this one):

public static String hash(String text, String algorithm)
        throws NoSuchAlgorithmException {
    byte[] hash = MessageDigest.getInstance(algorithm).digest(text.getBytes());
    return new BigInteger(1, hash).toString(16);
}

Edit: Oops - missed that this is essentially the same as kgiannakakis's and so may strip off a leading 0. Still, modifying this to the following, it's still the fastest:

public static String hash(String text, String algorithm)
        throws NoSuchAlgorithmException {
    byte[] hash = MessageDigest.getInstance(algorithm).digest(text.getBytes());
    BigInteger bi = new BigInteger(1, hash);
    String result = bi.toString(16);
    if (result.length() % 2 != 0) {
        return "0" + result;
    }
    return result;
}