Byte Array to Hexadecimal String Conversion

Question

Another journey down the difficult path! I'd like to know if there's anything I haven't accounted for, if this can be significantly improved, etc.

(Just as a side-note, I know that some of the formatting is a bit off; some places are spaced out a bit to make it more visually appealing.)

using System;
namespace Data
{
 public class BinaryHelper
 {
 public static string ByteToHexString (byte[] bytes)
 {
 char[] c = new char[bytes.Length * 2];
 byte b;
 for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++) {
 b = ((byte)(bytes [i] >> 4));
 c [i * 2] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + 0x37 : b + 0x30);
 b = ((byte)(bytes [i] & 0xF));
 c [i * 2 + 1] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + 0x37 : b + 0x30);
 }
 return new string (c);
 }
 public static byte[] HexStringToByte (string hex)
 {
 int len = hex.Length;
 byte[] bytes = new byte[len / 2];
 for (int i = 0; len > i; i += 2) {
 bytes [i / 2] = Convert.ToByte (hex.Substring (i, 2), 16);
 }
 return bytes;
 }
 }
}

Answer 1

Ask yourself "how can I make the meaning and intention of the code more clear?"

Consider making small helper methods rather than duplicating code:

static byte HighNibble(byte b) => (byte)(b >> 4);
static byte LowNibble(byte b) => (byte)(b & 0xF);
static char NibbleToHex => ... etc.

And now instead of

 b = ((byte)(bytes [i] >> 4));
 c [i * 2] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + 0x37 : b + 0x30)
 b = ((byte)(bytes [i] & 0xF));
 c [i * 2 + 1] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + 0x37 : b + 0x30);

Which is overwhelming in the sheer amount of punctuation, we have:

 c [i * 2] = NibbleToHex(HighNibble(bytes[i])); 
 c [i * 2 + 1] = NibbleToHex(LowNibble(bytes[i]));

So much easier to read and understand.

Answer 2

I found the magic numbers in this line less than obvious:

c [i * 2] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + 0x37 : b + 0x30);

0x30 is clearly '0', however 0x37 is well... '7'. I actually find this more expressive, even though it's longer:

c[i * 2] = (char)(b > 9 ? b + 'A' - 10: b + '0');

If you're interested you can also find a rather more concise version of ByteToArrayString which makes use of BitConverter to perform the translation in this answer. It essentially becomes a one-liner:

return BitConverter.ToString(bytes).Replace("-","");