我的正式解决方案:

/**
 * Decodes a hexadecimally encoded binary string.
 * <p>
 * Note that this function does <em>NOT</em> convert a hexadecimal number to a
 * binary number.
 *
 * @param hex Hexadecimal representation of data.
 * @return The byte[] representation of the given data.
 * @throws NumberFormatException If the hexadecimal input string is of odd
 * length or invalid hexadecimal string.
 */
public static byte[] hex2bin(String hex) throws NumberFormatException {
    if (hex.length() % 2 > 0) {
        throw new NumberFormatException("Hexadecimal input string must have an even length.");
    }
    byte[] r = new byte[hex.length() / 2];
    for (int i = hex.length(); i > 0;) {
        r[i / 2 - 1] = (byte) (digit(hex.charAt(--i)) | (digit(hex.charAt(--i)) << 4));
    }
    return r;
}

private static int digit(char ch) {
    int r = Character.digit(ch, 16);
    if (r < 0) {
        throw new NumberFormatException("Invalid hexadecimal string: " + ch);
    }
    return r;
}

类似于PHP的hex2bin()函数，但采用Java风格。

例子:

String data = new String(hex2bin("6578616d706c65206865782064617461"));
// data value: "example hex data"

common -codec中的Hex类应该为您做到这一点。

http://commons.apache.org/codec/

import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Hex;
...
byte[] decoded = Hex.decodeHex("00A0BF");
// 0x00 0xA0 0xBF

我一直用的方法是

public static final byte[] fromHexString(final String s) {
    String[] v = s.split(" ");
    byte[] arr = new byte[v.length];
    int i = 0;
    for(String val: v) {
        arr[i++] =  Integer.decode("0x" + val).byteValue();

    }
    return arr;
}

此方法根据空格分隔的十六进制值进行分割，但根据任何其他条件(例如分成两个字符的组)将字符串分割并不困难。

Bert Regelink提出的准则根本不起作用。 试试下面的方法:

import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;
import java.io.*;

public class Test
{  
    @Test
    public void testObjectStreams( ) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException
    {     
            ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(baos);

            String stringTest = "TEST";
            oos.writeObject( stringTest );

            oos.close();
            baos.close();

            byte[] bytes = baos.toByteArray();
            String hexString = DatatypeConverter.printHexBinary( bytes);
            byte[] reconvertedBytes = DatatypeConverter.parseHexBinary(hexString);

            assertArrayEquals( bytes, reconvertedBytes );

            ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(reconvertedBytes);
            ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(bais);

            String readString = (String) ois.readObject();

            assertEquals( stringTest, readString);
        }
    }

实际上，我认为BigInteger是很好的解决方案:

new BigInteger("00A0BF", 16).toByteArray();

编辑:正如海报所指出的，前导零不安全。

public static byte[] hex2ba(String sHex) throws Hex2baException {
    if (1==sHex.length()%2) {
        throw(new Hex2baException("Hex string need even number of chars"));
    }

    byte[] ba = new byte[sHex.length()/2];
    for (int i=0;i<sHex.length()/2;i++) {
        ba[i] = (Integer.decode(
                "0x"+sHex.substring(i*2, (i+1)*2))).byteValue();
    }
    return ba;
}