how to edit binary file on the unix systems

Question

On windows machine there are lots of third party editors available to edit a binary file. I belive there should be some thing similer buildin in the *nix systems as well. any idea how can i edit a binary file on unix?

Answer 1

I've had good experience with wxHexEditor... just make sure if you are hex-editing a drive you do it via the menu

Devices -> Open Disk Device -> SCSI Disk Drive Partition #_N_

Answer 2

There are much more hexeditors on Linux/Unix....

I use hexedit on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install hexedit

Answer 3

Bless is a high quality, full featured hex editor.

It is written in mono/Gtk# and its primary platform is GNU/Linux. However it should be able to run without problems on every platform that mono and Gtk# run. Main Features Bless currently provides the following features:

• Efficient editing of large data files and block devices.
• Multilevel undo - redo operations.
• Customizable data views.
• Fast data rendering on screen.
• Multiple tabs.
• Fast find and replace operations.
• A data conversion table.
• Advanced copy/paste capabilities.
• Highlighting of selection pattern matches in the file.
• Plugin based architecture.
• Export of data to text and html (others with plugins).
• Bitwise operations on data.
• A comprehensive user manual.

copied from http://home.gna.org/bless/

Answer 4

I made wxHexEditor, it's open sourced, written with C++/wxWidgets GUI libs and can open even your exabyte sized disk!

http://wxhexeditor.sf.net

Just try.

Answer 5

you can check wikipedia.

I prefer BIEW especially.

Answer 6

You can also try ghex2 GNOME utilities. This give you the automated hex-to-ASCII on the side, as well as the various character/integer decodes at the bottom. ghex2 http://kmbrandt.googlepages.com/hexeditor.jpg