Ascii/Hex convert in bash

The reason is because hexdump by default prints out 16-bit integers, not bytes. If your system has them, hd (or hexdump -C) or xxd will provide less surprising outputs - if not, od -t x1 is a POSIX-standard way to get byte-by-byte hex output. You can use od -t x1c to show both the byte hex values and the corresponding letters.

If you have xxd (which ships with vim), you can use xxd -r to convert back from hex (from the same format xxd produces). If you just have plain hex (just the '4161', which is produced by xxd -p) you can use xxd -r -p to convert back.

For the first part, try

echo Aa | od -t x1

It prints byte-by-byte

$ echo Aa | od -t x1
0000000 41 61 0a
0000003

The 0a is the implicit newline that echo produces.

Use echo -n or printf instead.

$ printf Aa | od -t x1
0000000 41 61
0000002

$> printf "%x%x\n" "'A" "'a"
4161

For single line solution:

echo "Hello World" | xxd -ps -c 200 | tr -d '\n'

It will print:

48656c6c6f20576f726c640a

or for files:

cat /path/to/file | xxd -ps -c 200 | tr -d '\n'

For reverse operation:

echo '48656c6c6f20576f726c640a' | xxd -ps -r

It will print:

Hello World