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Hex editor

 
Computer Desktop Encyclopedia: hex editor
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A program that displays every character in a file in hexadecimal notation. Hex editors are used extensively in program development to view the binary contents of files. Regular text editors display alphanumeric text and do not normally display characters below ASCII 32 or above ASCII 127. When it is necessary to inspect a file or a fragment of data for its true contents, only a hex editor will suffice. See text editor and source code editor.

The Encyclopedia Content in a Hex Editor
UltraEdit from IDM Computer Solutions www.idmcomp.com) is a sophisticated, full-featured hex editor. This shows the Encyclopedia text file for the Windows version with the hex on the left representing the text on the right. The arrows point to line feeds, which are 0A's in hex and dots in the text. In a text editor, a line feed creates a blank line. The file uses the Unix convention of single line feed (LF) characters for end of line, in contrast to the DOS/Windows carriage return/line feed pair (CR/LF).

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Wikipedia: Hex editor
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A hex editor (or binary file editor or byte editor) is a type of computer program that allows a user to manipulate binary (normally non-plain text) computer files. Hex editors that were designed to edit sector, or parse, data from floppy or hard disks were sometimes called sector editors or disk editors.

Details

Screenshot of a typical console hex editor

By using a hex editor, a user can see or edit the raw and exact contents of a file as opposed to the interpretation of the same content that other, higher level application software may associate with the file format. For example, this could be raw image data, in contrast to the way image editing software would interpret the same file.

In most hex editor applications the data of the computer file is represented as hexadecimal values grouped in 4 groups of 4 bytes and one group of 16 ASCII characters, non-printable characters are typically represented by a dot (".") in the ASCII dump.

Hex dumper

A hex dumper is a memory dumper which outputs in hexadecimal (and often ASCII too). Unlike editors, there are no editing commands; they are output only. The two standard Unix shell commands are hexdump and od. These programs output in a variety of formats and bases, not just hex.

Examples:

  • hexdump -C <file>
  • od -tcx1 <file>

See also

Search Wikibooks The Wikibook x86 Disassembly has a page on the topic of

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