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Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: jhormilla on July 06, 2022, 04:46:02 am

Title: Hex editors
Post by: jhormilla on July 06, 2022, 04:46:02 am
Hex editor recommendations? What are you guys and gals using, pros and cons etc.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: ataradov on July 06, 2022, 05:05:23 am
HxD on Windows is pretty good. On Linux I use Ghex, but it is pretty meh.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: WattsThat on July 06, 2022, 05:06:26 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: gslick on July 06, 2022, 05:30:36 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: TheSteve on July 06, 2022, 06:38:51 am
I've used Hex Workshop for years, but it isn't free.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: adam4521 on July 06, 2022, 08:58:59 am
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.

Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: UniSoft on July 06, 2022, 09:11:06 am
IMHO "010 Editor" is the best one...
But it is not freeware.
Support scripts and templates what you can write yourself.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: Berni on July 06, 2022, 09:14:34 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: madires on July 06, 2022, 09:25:18 am
Quote from: ataradov on July 06, 2022, 05:05:23 am
On Linux I use Ghex, but it is pretty meh.

Have you tried Bless or Okteta?
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: Peabody on July 06, 2022, 03:32:27 pm
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: alexanderbrevig on July 06, 2022, 03:47:54 pm
xxd + neovim or (doom) emacs  :-+
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: madires on July 06, 2022, 03:49:09 pm
For converting formats under linux: srecord
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: Fungus on July 06, 2022, 03:59:12 pm
Quote from: jhormilla on July 06, 2022, 04:46:02 am
Hex editor recommendations? What are you guys and gals using, pros and cons etc.

Operating system? Some basic info would be nice...
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: ataradov on July 06, 2022, 04:42:01 pm
Quote from: madires on July 06, 2022, 09:25:18 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: Karel on July 06, 2022, 05:37:34 pm
Okteta!

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

 :popcorn:
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: bayjelly on July 07, 2022, 12:39:04 am
Quote from: alexanderbrevig on July 06, 2022, 03:47:54 pm
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 12:56:20 am
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
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: Fungus on July 07, 2022, 01:01:17 am
Quote from: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 12:56:20 am
The cool kids are using ImHex these days

"To compile ImHex, a C++20 compiler is required."   :-X
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: ataradov on July 07, 2022, 01:11:03 am
Quote from: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 12:56:20 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 01:25:39 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: ataradov on July 07, 2022, 01:31:04 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 01:47:50 am
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   :-+
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: ataradov on July 07, 2022, 01:58:36 am
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.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 02:27:51 am
Oh, I take back my ::) , it's a setting!

Help>Settings>Interface>FPS Limit
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: EE-digger on July 07, 2022, 02:30:06 am
I'll second the "010 Editor".  Powerful searches, number bases, offsets, indices, more.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: Fungus on July 07, 2022, 02:53:42 am
Quote from: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 01:47:50 am
Yes, immediate mode GUIs are all the rage these days.

So basically it sucks your battery dry for nothing in return?  :palm:

Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: ataradov on July 07, 2022, 03:01:13 am
Quote from: Fungus on July 07, 2022, 02:53:42 am
So basically it sucks your battery dry for nothing in return?  :palm:
Presumed ease of programming , I guess. I'm not sold at all on that. But at the same time, most of the time it sleeps anyway, so the practical battery impact is minimal. But if more applications go that way, it might be an issue.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: jjoonathan on July 07, 2022, 03:07:15 am
Re: battery, I could see it going either way. Retained-mode branchy cleverness rules the big vendor APIs, yes, but those choices were made 30 years ago. How did they age?
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: TomS_ on July 07, 2022, 07:09:55 am
Maybe it depends on the exact features you want, and maybe you don't go in for the whole online thing, but I've been using the website hexed.it for a bit now and it's good as a simple and straight forward hex editor.

I believe it does work offline, although I've never tried this myself.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: tv84 on July 10, 2022, 12:04:04 pm
Came late to the party...

HxD can be used for most things we need a hex-editor. No fancy stuff, just what we look for in a very simple GUI.

I also use UltraEdit but only 0.5% of the times.
Title: Re: Hex editors
Post by: Fungus on July 10, 2022, 12:42:59 pm
Quote from: tv84 on July 10, 2022, 12:04:04 pm
HxD can be used for most things we need a hex-editor. No fancy stuff, just what we look for in a very simple GUI.

Yep. I use HxD on Windows. It's basic, it's fast, it searches OK.

I used a thing called "Hex Fiend" on Mac but there wasn't much to choose from (typical Mac - once you step outside very mainstream apps there's just dry desert).