How to Convert Hexadecimal to Decimal in Python

In programming, you oftentimes work with numbers in different formats, such as hexadecimal and decimal.

This is because different formats are used for different scenarios. Hexadecimal is used in things like colors in CSS, IP and memory addresses.

Decimal is used for mathematical operations, such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.

In this post, we'll learn how to convert a hexadecimal number to a decimal number in Python.

Using int()

The recommended way to convert a hexadecimal number to a decimal number is to use the int() function.

This function will typecast your hexadecimal string to its decimal equivalent as an integer.

To do this, you just need to pass it your hexadecimal string and the base, in this case, 16.

PYTHON
hex = "0xFF"

dec = int(hex, 16)

print(dec)

BASH
255

Using ast

Another way you can convert a hexadecimal number to a decimal number is to use the ast module.

This module provides a literal_eval function that will take a string and evaluates it.

When you pass this function a hexadecimal string, it will return the decimal equivalent.

Let's look at an example:

PYTHON
import ast

hex = "0xFF"

dec = ast.literal_eval(hex)

print(dec)

BASH
255

Conclusion

In this post, we looked at the two best ways to convert a hexadecimal number to a decimal number.

You can either use the built-in int() function or import the ast module to accomplish the task.

Hope this has been useful to you! Thanks for reading!

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