What is the purpose of the HEX function in MySQL?

The HEX() function in MySQL is used to convert a string into its hexadecimal representation. Specifically, the HEX() function converts each character in the string into its corresponding ASCII hexadecimal value and returns the result as a string.

For example, if you run the following query:

SELECT HEX('Hello');

It will return the string “48656C6C6F”, which represents the result of converting the ASCII codes of each character in the string “Hello” to hexadecimal.

The HEX() function is commonly used to encode a string into hexadecimal form, for storage or transmission when needed, or for specific operations and processing in certain cases.