5 ms·

GNU poke: an extensible editor for structured binary data

75 points by dima55 3y ago

psanford 3y ago
Poke is neat, but its one of those tools with a really steep learning curve and not great documentation. I've played around with it and then given up when seemingly simple things to do are not obvious and grepping the documentation and googling fail to surface the solution. If you really needed a tool like this I could see how you might get over that learning curve. Or if you know someone who's already and expert and can show you all the tricks. Otherwise its hard to imagine people reaching for it casually.
- nico 3y ago
  Can fq be used instead? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36175000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36175000
  - psanford 3y ago
    fq doesn't work for file formats it doesn't know about.
cglong 3y ago
I find it interesting that, despite the evident GNU ethos in this project, they chose YouTube to host the demo.
- jdeaton 3y ago
  In the video he says "I do not consider proprietary software to be software at all" which I find very interesting
guestbest 3y ago
I wonder if this is the next generation of software delivery, an infrastructure team collects the payload from storage, stops it down to its core implementation, then repackages it in the process needed for the new system. It would be kind of like a post apocalyptic salvage of useful utilities that lack the necessary infrastructure from the previous era and can be remade useful through recompilation as a new process
turtledragonfly 3y ago
There are a lot of interesting tools in this area. Here's a previous comment of mine with a list of various such things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34990984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34990984 There was some good discussion on that previous post from others, as well.
- lars_francke 3y ago
  You might be interested in ImHex https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex Seems similar to Hexfiend but cross platform and very powerful. I have never used Hexfiend though, so can't really compare. Just going by the GitHub readme.
- marlin 3y ago
  I am also working on a project in this space. It is a template format for binary data, and accompanying commandline tooling. It is usable today for tasks such as: - generating structured binary diffs - creating universal extractors, several custom game formats are covered already It is in a early stage but would love some feedback! https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng
  - turtledragonfly 3y ago
    Is there allowance for file formats whose contents are dynamic, based on the values present in other parts of the file? For instance "if value at offset X is 123, then treat this other block of data as format ABC, otherwise treat it as as DEF". Obviously can get complex. The Adobe PSD format does horrible things like this all over the place (:
    - marlin 3y ago
      Yes, see the "if statements" section in the (very terse) documentation https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/TEMPLATE.md#if-statements https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/TEMPLATE.md#i... You can see it in use in the PNG format template, here: https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/templates/images/png.yml https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/templates/ima...
viraptor 3y ago
I'm struggling to figure out what formats are actually covered. They say pickles are included, but the repo contains very few of them: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/poke.git/tree/pickles https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/poke.git/tree/pickles The community page is also pretty basic https://pokology.org/pickles.html https://pokology.org/pickles.html Am I missing something obvious here?
dang 3y ago
This is a fine topic and reposts are fine after a year or so* but as there was a significant thread 3 months ago, the current repost counts as a dupe: GNU poke: The extensible editor for structured binary data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34986042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34986042 - March 2023 (34 comments) Also related: Erlang and GNU poke are better than hex editors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435716 - March 2021 (2 comments) GNU poke 1.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26274466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26274466 - Feb 2021 (38 comments) GNU poke – new interactive editor for binary data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25131895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25131895 - Nov 2020 (7 comments) GNU poke: An interactive, extensible editor for binary data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23031352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23031352 - April 2020 (2 comments) * https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

75 points by dima55 3y ago

Poke is neat, but its one of those tools with a really steep learning curve and not great documentation. I've played around with it and then given up when seemingly simple things to do are not obvious and grepping the documentation and googling fail to surface the solution. If you really needed a tool like this I could see how you might get over that learning curve. Or if you know someone who's already and expert and can show you all the tricks. Otherwise its hard to imagine people reaching for it casually.

nico 3y ago
Can fq be used instead? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36175000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36175000
- psanford 3y ago
  fq doesn't work for file formats it doesn't know about.

cglong 3y ago

I find it interesting that, despite the evident GNU ethos in this project, they chose YouTube to host the demo.

jdeaton 3y ago
In the video he says "I do not consider proprietary software to be software at all" which I find very interesting

guestbest 3y ago

I wonder if this is the next generation of software delivery, an infrastructure team collects the payload from storage, stops it down to its core implementation, then repackages it in the process needed for the new system. It would be kind of like a post apocalyptic salvage of useful utilities that lack the necessary infrastructure from the previous era and can be remade useful through recompilation as a new process

turtledragonfly 3y ago

There are a lot of interesting tools in this area. Here's a previous comment of mine with a list of various such things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34990984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34990984 There was some good discussion on that previous post from others, as well.

lars_francke 3y ago
You might be interested in ImHex https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex Seems similar to Hexfiend but cross platform and very powerful. I have never used Hexfiend though, so can't really compare. Just going by the GitHub readme.
marlin 3y ago
I am also working on a project in this space. It is a template format for binary data, and accompanying commandline tooling. It is usable today for tasks such as: - generating structured binary diffs - creating universal extractors, several custom game formats are covered already It is in a early stage but would love some feedback! https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng
- turtledragonfly 3y ago
  Is there allowance for file formats whose contents are dynamic, based on the values present in other parts of the file? For instance "if value at offset X is 123, then treat this other block of data as format ABC, otherwise treat it as as DEF". Obviously can get complex. The Adobe PSD format does horrible things like this all over the place (:
  - marlin 3y ago
    Yes, see the "if statements" section in the (very terse) documentation https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/TEMPLATE.md#if-statements https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/TEMPLATE.md#i... You can see it in use in the PNG format template, here: https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/templates/images/png.yml https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/templates/ima...

viraptor 3y ago

I'm struggling to figure out what formats are actually covered. They say pickles are included, but the repo contains very few of them: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/poke.git/tree/pickles https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/poke.git/tree/pickles The community page is also pretty basic https://pokology.org/pickles.html https://pokology.org/pickles.html Am I missing something obvious here?

dang 3y ago

This is a fine topic and reposts are fine after a year or so* but as there was a significant thread 3 months ago, the current repost counts as a dupe: GNU poke: The extensible editor for structured binary data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34986042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34986042 - March 2023 (34 comments) Also related: Erlang and GNU poke are better than hex editors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435716 - March 2021 (2 comments) GNU poke 1.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26274466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26274466 - Feb 2021 (38 comments) GNU poke – new interactive editor for binary data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25131895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25131895 - Nov 2020 (7 comments) GNU poke: An interactive, extensible editor for binary data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23031352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23031352 - April 2020 (2 comments) * https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html