String array to Hex Array (Java)
===

I have a String array that actually consists of Hex characters. 

Let's say the contents are -> 8C,D9,26,1D,69,B7,96,DB

Now I want these to be interpreted as Hex characters of 1 byte each and not as a String where each entry is 2 bytes.

    StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();
    for (int j = 0; j < array.length; j++) {
            String temp = "\u00"+ array[j];
            output.append(temp);
        }

Tried something like that, but it's not possible because it keeps complaining about "illegal unicode escape". I tried using "\\u00" (i.e. two backslashes before u, but stackoverflow displays only one there) instead of "\u00" to get around that error, but then I don't see the real Hex values in the array, instead I see a bunch of strings like -> "\U008C" , "\U00D9" and so on..

I want the after conversion values to be 0x8C, 0xD9, 0x26...

Thanks.