How do you convert a HEX file to ASCII

I'm a data analysis consultant and am unfamiliar with this data format that I received from a client. We usually receive files in some sort of ascii print or text report and then use analysis tools such as ACL or Monarch to parse them out.

Unfortunately, the data is confidential and i can not post. Just was wondering if there is an easy answer...thanks!

I'm a data analysis consultant and am unfamiliar with this data format that I received from a client. We usually receive files in some sort of ascii print or text report and then use analysis tools such as ACL or Monarch to parse them out.

Unfortunately, the data is confidential and i can not post. Just was wondering if there is an easy answer...thanks!

If the total data is 20MB large, then it might possibly be ok to send the first 3-5 lines of the HEX data.

If by "Hex" you mean "Intel Hex", then it already is ASCII!

Intel Hex is an ASCII representation of binary data.

The format is described here:
http://www.keil.com/support/docs/1584.htm
There's also some examples - see if you recognise it!

Opening it in UltraEdit using the Hex viewer, it looks like this:

00000000h: 8C C5 97 2B 5C D6 00 00 00 00 93 98 30 00 30 00 ;
00000010h: F5 F2 F0 40 F9 F4 F0 F6 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ;
00000020h: 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ;
00000030h: 00 00 40 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 92 98 ;

I opened it in WordPad and it's a bunch of special characters (boxes, @, etc.)

That's a binary file, then.

UltraEdit is displaying it 16 bytes to a line, and showing the start address to the left of each line:

00000000h: 8C C5 97 2B 5C D6 00 00 00 00 93 98 30 00 30 00 ;
^^^^^^^^^  ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
Address     |  |  |  +-- 4th byte - at Address +3
            |  |  +----- 3rd byte - at Address +2
            |  +-------- 2nd byte - at Address +1
            +----------- 1st byte - at Address
etc

Using the HEX viewer?

A hex viewer is what you use when you want to look at a binary file.

If the file is already in hexadecimal format, it is already - as Andy notes - in a form of ASCII.

I don't recognize the binary data, and it doesn't looks to make sense if treated as IEEE floating-point data either.

"I don't recognize the binary data..."

I don't expect you would: I don't think it has anythihg to do with embedded firmware - the OP says he's a "data analysis consultant"