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hexpeek: a hex editor for huge files

24 points by resiliware 6y ago

hexpeek: a hex editor for huge files Occasionally I need to work with huge binary files. Over the years I've tried many different tools and never found one that was exactly what I wanted. In my experience most hex editors either (1) do not work well with 4GB+ files or (2) require the user to learn a curses interface and are not scriptable. So I ended up creating a hex editor with some nice features: (1) prompt interface with command history (with libedit), (2) scriptable interface with a flexible command language, (3) no glitches on huge files -- no reading until user requests, (4) fully functional insert and delete, (5) multi-level backup and restore, (6) ability to dump generic file descriptors, (7) work in hexadecimal and with 64 bit file offsets by default, (8) BSD 3-clause license, (9) and more... If interested, please check out the project at https://www.hexpeek.com or send e-mail to hexpeek@hexpeek.com. hexpeek is known to work on Debian, CentOS, FreeBSD, and Cygwin and is expected to work on any recent POSIX-like system. I look forward to improving hexpeek based on community feedback. Please let me know what features you are looking for in a hex/metadata editor. About the author: visit https://www.resiliware.com for more about me. Thanks for reading!

dmitrygr 6y ago
hexedit (included in debian/ubuntu) and dd (included in everything) seem to cover both large files and scriptability quite well
- resiliware 6y ago
  hexedit, as with most traditional hex editors, prints file offsets as 32 bits. So for offsets > 4GiB+, either the editor doesn't show the offset correctly, or it reformats the screen to handle it and has inconsistent widths within output. You are of course correct that dd provides the basics. However my goal with hexpeek was to create a more powerful and user-friendly tool than relying on dd. For example, how do you insert one byte in the middle of huge file with dd? Yes it can be done with multiple commands, but with hexpeek it is one command.
- Traster 6y ago
  Yes, I was confused by this too - because my only experience of using hex editors was hexediting an executable (definitely not to remove some DRM), hexedit was very capable and the executable wasn't exactly small.
  - resiliware 6y ago
    My lower bound for huge files is 4GiB. The actual use case that started the development of hexpeek was trying to surgically inspect and modify disparate parts of a 100GiB file. I'm not sure if your executable was that large.

24 points by resiliware 6y ago

dmitrygr 6y ago

hexedit (included in debian/ubuntu) and dd (included in everything) seem to cover both large files and scriptability quite well

resiliware 6y ago
hexedit, as with most traditional hex editors, prints file offsets as 32 bits. So for offsets > 4GiB+, either the editor doesn't show the offset correctly, or it reformats the screen to handle it and has inconsistent widths within output. You are of course correct that dd provides the basics. However my goal with hexpeek was to create a more powerful and user-friendly tool than relying on dd. For example, how do you insert one byte in the middle of huge file with dd? Yes it can be done with multiple commands, but with hexpeek it is one command.
Traster 6y ago
Yes, I was confused by this too - because my only experience of using hex editors was hexediting an executable (definitely not to remove some DRM), hexedit was very capable and the executable wasn't exactly small.
- resiliware 6y ago
  My lower bound for huge files is 4GiB. The actual use case that started the development of hexpeek was trying to surgically inspect and modify disparate parts of a 100GiB file. I'm not sure if your executable was that large.