Hex editors

[jhormilla]

Hex editor recommendations? What are you guys and gals using, pros and cons etc.

[ataradov]

HxD on Windows is pretty good. On Linux I use Ghex, but it is pretty meh.

[WattsThat]

Any of the freeware windows hex tools are functional. Without some specific need cases, it’s really hard to say, everyone has their personal favorites.

My goto paid for tool is Vedit from Greenview data, it’s macro capabilities are superb. I have versions back to 8” floppy based cp/m.

[gslick]

I have been using Free Hex Editor Neo from HHD Software for a while now on Windows.

The free version does just about everything I have needed so far. It works well and is useful enough, and the upgrade cost to the non-free Standard, Professional, and Ultimate versions seems reasonable enough that I wouldn't think too much about it before paying for the upgraded versions if they had features that I really needed for some project. I don't mind paying a reasonable cost for software that works well and does something that I need.

[TheSteve]

I've used Hex Workshop for years, but it isn't free.

[adam4521]

xxd filter program in shell/Linux. Converts the bytes into text editable file that you can use in any text editor. Afterwards, reverse convert to bytes.

[UniSoft]

IMHO "010 Editor" is the best one...
But it is not freeware.
Support scripts and templates what you can write yourself.

[Berni]

I like WinHex

It is not free, but it works well and has a fair bit of features in it. It can also open things that are not files, like open a disk drive as raw sectors(and even parse filesystems inside it) or directly open the RAM area of an application. So it lets you poke around with some really low level stuff.

[madires]

On Linux I use Ghex, but it is pretty meh.

Have you tried Bless or Okteta?

[Peabody]

ditto on HxD for Windows.  One recent addition was the import of an IntelHex file into binary, and the export of binary as IntelHex.  Installable and portable versions.

[alexanderbrevig]

xxd + neovim or (doom) emacs 

[madires]

For converting formats under linux: srecord

[Fungus]

Hex editor recommendations? What are you guys and gals using, pros and cons etc.

Operating system? Some basic info would be nice...

[ataradov]

Have you tried Bless or Okteta?

No, I have not. I installed both. Bless looks no better than Ghex. But Okteta looks interesting. I'll need to use it more for real tasks and see now it goes.

[Karel]

Okteta!

https://apps.kde.org/okteta/

 

[bayjelly]

xxd + neovim or (doom) emacs 

I used that combination for a long time, but the most annoying thing about it was that I couldn't really *search*, neither hex nor text. Because you are searching in human readable output, you have to be lucky for your (short enough) search string to happen to be aligned such that it is all contained within one line.

I guess you could workaround that limitation by using xxd -p, search in that, note down the offset, and then seek to that offset in the normal xxd output, but...

... in the end I just got a good hex editor. Since I'm primarily on macOS I use Hex Fiend. Has some nice features too like showing you interpretation of numbers (signed/unsigned, hex,dec,oct...) of arbitrarily long numbers (just highlight the bytes), the ability to replace 0x00 values with spaces (makes non-zero data stand out more), and binary templates.

But it's macOS only I think.

[jjoonathan]

The cool kids are using ImHex these days

https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex

But last time I took a look the .deb installer was broken and the time before that... I forget, but I remember I didn't get far. It actually installed and opened a file this time, so I suppose it's time to give it a spin!

EDIT: its best feature is that it makes me feel 10 years younger

[Fungus]

The cool kids are using ImHex these days

"To compile ImHex, a C++20 compiler is required."   

[ataradov]

The cool kids are using ImHex these days

Tried AppImage version. It is sluggish as hell. It might be a fine tool for reverse engineering with all the advanced features, but as a simple hex editor it us not good at all.

Also I could not figure out how to do any edits in the ASCII side of the hex view. But that may be me not spending enough time with it.

[jjoonathan]

LOL it has a FPS counter.

And it gets 25FPS on my beast PC.

Yeah, I think the right move is to set it aside for another year or two. I like the style, but they have work to do.

[ataradov]

FPS counter is because they use ImGui, which inherently renders the display all the time, even if nothing is changing.  But it scales back to 4 FPS when there is no activity.

With full activity (move the mouse a lot) I get 60 FPS, so it is vsync locked.

But the UI is buggy. I just opened it again and the window is not maximized as it was before closing the window. But now the layout is locked to the absolute coordinates, so top left corner is at (0, 0) of the display regardless of where I put the window.

[jjoonathan]

Yes, immediate mode GUIs are all the rage these days. 25fps is when I pump updates by resizing it. I can get 60fps by messing around in the hex view -- I suspect they are using dirty rects under the hood after all -- but it's definitely not locked to my 144Hz monitor. I'm laughing because this does not match the rhetoric from the immediate mode camp. I'm pretty sure the ancient java swing editor in Ghidra is outperforming it 

Overall I'm not too chuffed about perf -- it's a hex editor, after all -- but the general bugginess is still pretty rough. Too bad.

Hey, it was worth more than I paid for it   

[ataradov]

Resize is indeed locked to 25 FPS. It is not tied to the refresh, they are just setting FPS:

Code: [Select]

       const auto targetFps = ImHexApi::System::getTargetFPS();
        if (targetFps <= 200)
            std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(u64((this->m_lastFrameTime + 1 / targetFps - glfwGetTime()) * 1000)));

And target FPS is loaded from the settings. By default is set to 60 FPS.

But it still might be vsync limited. I changed the FPS to unlimited, yet I can't get more than 60 FPS, which is fair I guess.

[jjoonathan]

Oh, I take back my , it's a setting!

Help>Settings>Interface>FPS Limit

[EE-digger]

I'll second the "010 Editor".  Powerful searches, number bases, offsets, indices, more.