It converts a string to a long, and you can pass the base of the number in. Strip that # sign off first though, or pass to strtol a pointer to the first numerical character.
Joshua Weinberg's answer is mostly correct, however the 0x prefix is optional when scanning hexadecimal integers. If you have a string in the format #01FFFFAB, you can still use NSScanner, but you can skip the first character.
unsigned result = 0;
NSScanner *scanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString:@"#01FFFFAB"];
[scanner setScanLocation:1]; // bypass '#' character
[scanner scanHexInt:&result];
Swift 4 standard library introduced new initializer for parsing all integer types. It takes string to parse with radix (i.e. base) and returns optional integer: