iphone - Converting HEX NSString To NSData

Question

I'm trying to convert a Hex NSString to NSData (I'm using the below attached code). The following is the output:

<00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000>

which looks totally irrelevant to me. Any idea/ suggestions on where its going wrong?

NSString *strData = @"72ff63cea198b3edba8f7e0c23acc345050187a0cde5a9872cbab091ab73e553";

NSLog(@"string Data length is %d",[strData length]);

NSMutableData *commandToSend= [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
unsigned char whole_byte;
char byte_chars[2];
int i;
for (i=0; i < [strData length]/2; i++) {

    byte_chars[0] = [strData characterAtIndex:i*2];
    byte_chars[1] = [strData characterAtIndex:i*2+1];
    whole_byte = strtol(byte_chars, NULL, [strData length]);
    [commandToSend appendBytes:&whole_byte length:1]; 
}
NSLog(@"%@", commandToSend);    

Answer 1

NSString *command = @"72ff63cea198b3edba8f7e0c23acc345050187a0cde5a9872cbab091ab73e553";

command = [command stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""];
NSMutableData *commandToSend= [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
unsigned char whole_byte;
char byte_chars[3] = {'','',''};
int i;
for (i=0; i < [command length]/2; i++) {
    byte_chars[0] = [command characterAtIndex:i*2];
    byte_chars[1] = [command characterAtIndex:i*2+1];
    whole_byte = strtol(byte_chars, NULL, 16);
    [commandToSend appendBytes:&whole_byte length:1]; 
}
NSLog(@"%@", commandToSend);