3 ms·
That brought back memories. When I was a kid I liked to poke around executables in the MS-DOS world. Hex editors were limited in the sense that they wouldn't l
by copperx 8y ago
That brought back memories.
When I was a kid I liked to poke around executables in the MS-DOS world. Hex editors were limited in the sense that they wouldn't let me insert bytes into the file, just edit existing ones. Because I didn't have access to an disassembler or an assembler (they were sold at stores but they were too expensive for me), I wrote a simple program that would convert a binary file into a text file full of hex codes, then I could edit that, change jumps to different addresses, change strings, and then I would reassemble the executable with another program to see the effect. I used this to translate programs and games to Spanish by changing the strings in the executable. Messages in Spanish are in
average longer than English ones, so I couldn't just use a hex editor.
It's funny to me that the hex file format is a real thing.
- keithnz 8y agoit's a bit more involved than just hex.... it specifies address ranges and data that goes into those address ranges + more see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HEX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HEX
- phyllostachys 8y agoAnd, unfortunately, it is a destructive process going from elf to hex, as I've discovered a few times. Intel HEX is just the data at what addresses so one looses the section info and metadata from an elf. I'm always happen to see when a uC vendor IDE keeps the elfs and the programmer takes elfs.
- JdeBP 8y agoOne of the things that would have benefitted MS-DOS that came out of the box with OS/2 1.x was a PATCH.EXE , a tool for applying binary patches.