Is there a binary editor for MacPorts?

Richard L. Hamilton rlhamil at smart.net
Thu Sep 23 01:40:26 UTC 2021


HexFiend (installs /Applications/MacPorts/Hex Fiend.app) is a true binary editor; it shows a split view, hex on the left, characters (ASCII with anything else replaced with periods or spaces, I guess) on the right; you can edit either side. Unlike some binary editors, it can handle insertions or deletions, not just changes in-place, although you can use Edit->Mode->Overwrite to avoid accidents insertions if you really want overwrite. It can apparently handle really huge files. It has a GUI interface, and it's not at all like vi/vim.

Whether that's REALLY what you want, given both its apparent strengths and limitations (i.e. what character sets it can handle - I don't think it can usefully display various 8-bit character sets or UTF-16 or UCS-32) is your call.

port info HexFiend

for more info. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to include builtin help, and if there's any documentation beyond the brief description (and a bit more on templates on their web site, google for Hex Fiend), I haven't found it.


> On Sep 22, 2021, at 17:26, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> 
> I can see heaps of 3rd-party stuff out there, but is there an "official" one?
> 
> I have a file with some binary stuff in it (8-bit accents, perhaps?) and "vi" just spits the dummy at that point and I want to search down further.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -- Dave
> 

-- 
eMail:				mailto:rlhamil at smart.net




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