How to convert hex to binary in Text mode?

Question

I'm trying to convert hex values to binary. For example, I have got some text file containing:

0.0 010111010  B4
0.1 001001011  A3
...

And I'm trying to convert B4 to 10110100, and A3 too.

But I can't find any method. So does anyone know how to do that?

Answer 1

The helpfile :h eval-examples contains an example of a number2binary function:

" The function Nr2Bin() returns the binary string representation of a number.
func Nr2Bin(nr)
  let n = a:nr
  let r = ""
  while n
    let r = '01'[n % 2] . r
    let n = n / 2
  endwhile
  return r
endfunc

Copy that example to your .vimrc and after restarting your vim, you can do :echo Nr2Bin(0xB4) and it will output 10110100.

When writing (e.g. in insert mode) you can then, press <C-R>=Nr2Bin(0xA3) and the result will be inserted into your buffer.