Scripting Guide - SAS

Chapter 6 Types of Data 121
Hexadecimal and BLOB Functions
Table 6.6 Hexadecimal and BLOB Functions (Continued)
Syntax
Blob To Char(blob)
Blob To Char(blob,
encoding)
Blob Peek(blob,
offset, length)
Explanation
Converts binary data to a Unicode string.
The default encoding supported for the hex code is UTF-8. You can also
specify one of these encodings: utf-8, utf-16le, utf-16be, us-ascii,
iso-8859-1, and ascii-hex.
Returns a new BLOB that is a subset of the given BLOB that is length
bytes long and begins at the offset. Note that the offset is 0-based.
Hex (string) returns the hexadecimal codes for each character in the argument. For example,
returns
Hex("Abc")
"416263"
since 41, 62, and 63 are the hexadecimal codes (in Ascii) for “A”, “b”, and “c”.
Hex to Char (string) converts hexadecimal to characters. The resulting character string might not be
valid display characters. All the characters must be in pairs, in the ranges 0-9, A-Z, and a-z. Blanks and
commas are allowed, and skipped. For example,
returns
Hex To Char (“4142”)
"AB"
since 41 and 42 are the hexadecimal equivalents of “A” and “B”.
Hex and Hex To Char are inverses of each other, so
returns
Hex To Char ( Hex("Abc") )
"Abc"
Hex To Blob(string) takes a string of hexadecimal codes and converts it to a binary object.
a = Hex To Blob("6A6B6C"); Show(a);
a = Char To Blob("jkl", “ascii~hex”)
Blob Peek(blob,offset,length) extracts bytes as defined by the parameters from a blob.
b = Blob Peek(a,1,2); Show(b);
b = Char To Blob("kl", “ascii~hex”)
b = Blob Peek(a,0,2); Show(b);
b = Char To Blob("jk", “ascii~hex”)
b = Blob Peek(a,2); Show(b);
b = Char To Blob("l", “ascii~hex”)
Hex(blob) converts a blob into hexadecimal.