const char hex_asc[] = "0123456789abcdef"; const char hex_asc_upper[] = "0123456789ABCDEF"; /** * hex_to_bin - convert a hex digit to its real value * @ch: ascii character represents hex digit * * hex_to_bin() converts one hex digit to its actual value or -1 in case of bad * input. * * This function is used to load cryptographic keys, so it is coded in such a * way that there are no conditions or memory accesses that depend on data. * * Explanation of the logic: * (ch - '9' - 1) is negative if ch <= '9' * ('0' - 1 - ch) is negative if ch >= '0' * we "and" these two values, so the result is negative if ch is in the range * '0' ... '9' * we are only interested in the sign, so we do a shift ">> 8"; note that right * shift of a negative value is implementation-defined, so we cast the * value to (unsigned) before the shift --- we have 0xffffff if ch is in * the range '0' ... '9', 0 otherwise * we "and" this value with (ch - '0' + 1) --- we have a value 1 ... 10 if ch is * in the range '0' ... '9', 0 otherwise * we add this value to -1 --- we have a value 0 ... 9 if ch is in the range '0' * ... '9', -1 otherwise * the next line is similar to the previous one, but we need to decode both * uppercase and lowercase letters, so we use (ch & 0xdf), which converts * lowercase to uppercase */ int hex_to_bin(unsigned char ch) { unsigned char cu = ch & 0xdf; return -1 + ((ch - '0' + 1) & (unsigned)((ch - '9' - 1) & ('0' - 1 - ch)) >> 8) + ((cu - 'A' + 11) & (unsigned)((cu - 'F' - 1) & ('A' - 1 - cu)) >> 8); }