hexadecimal value in input string needs to be checked
<p>I am basically trying to get a user to input a hexadecimal input via 
getline into a string as i will do other operations on this. (using c++ .net stuff won't work)</p>

<p>i do not want to break this into chars per say and then go through each char in the string and see if its in range from [0-9] or [Aa-Ff]. </p>

<p>Instead, I wanted to know if there was a cool function that anyone knew of or a better way to do it. I am aware of the strtoul function but it returns a long. this will force me to then i guess pass it to a stream to make it back into a string again.</p>

<p>another thing with the long i am not sure of if i have to worry about 64 bit long vs 32 bit long. I am developing this on a linx box using an intel processor but it could be used on a unix box whose processor could be 64 bit i am not sure. </p>

<p>so i guess there are two questions here really. any help would be most welcome</p>

<p>could I get an answer on:
can you also comment on my second question about the long? even though i don't have to worry about that now...if i save a variable in a long using a 32 bit system....would that change ( i imagine so the size of long should change on a 64 bit processor) what would this mean for the info saved in the variable? and second in order to avoid the whole little/big endian thing i saved it in a long thinking since its a register of sorts it would not be an issue with porting. was i wrong to think that?</p>

<p>thanks</p>
