From: Joshua Bassett <josh.bassett@...>
Date: 2007-10-31T10:56:46+09:00
Subject: Re: (BitTorrent-related) binary "string" to hexadecimal?

Hi Shanti,

> I still have no clue what a "hex nibble" is but it does the trick in a 
> pinch! =)

A "hex nibble" is half a byte represented in hexadecimal. In other 
words, a byte (8 bits) is made up of two (4 bit) nibbles (a most 
significant and a least significant) and in hexadecimal numbering each 
nibble corresponds to a hexadecimal digit.

For example, the byte 0xFE (1111 1110) is composed of two nibbles: F 
(1111), the most significant, and E (1110), the least significant.

The ruby function digest.unpack('H*') unpacks the binary string "digest" 
into a string of hex bytes with the most significant nibble written 
before the least significant.

Hope that makes things a bit clearer for you.

Josh
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