A silly thread on Twitter came to my attention today that stirred some late 1980’s/1990’s phreak/hax0r nostalgia in me. So, of course, I did what any geek would do, wrote a one-off utility script for it. Have fun confusing your parents, kids.
#! /usr/bin/env escript
-mode(compile).
main([Command | Input]) ->
ok = io:setopts([{encoding, unicode}]),
Output = convert(Command, Input),
io:format("~ts~n", [Output]).
convert("t", Input) ->
String = string:join(Input, " "),
string:join(lists:map(fun(C) -> integer_to_list(C, 16) end, String), " ");
convert("h", Input) ->
lists:map(fun(C) -> list_to_integer(C, 16) end, Input);
convert(_, _) ->
"hextext usage: `hextext t|h [text]".
(Also, look up rot13 — ’twas all the rage 30 years ago, and still makes an appearance as a facilitator of hidden easter eggs in some games. A lot of “garbled alien/monster/otherling speech” text is rot13.)