hex

hex is yet another hex viewer. It automatically interprets fields within files using a set of Lua scripts, colorizing them and showing descriptions on the side.

At the moment there aren’t that many features and we only have a few decoders.

Packages

Regular releases are sporadic. git master should be stable enough. You can get a package with the latest development version from Archlinux’s AUR, or from openSUSE Build Service for the rest of mainstream distributions. Consult the list of repositories and their respective links at:

https://build.opensuse.org/project/repositories/home:pjanouch:git

Building and Running

Build dependencies: CMake, pkg-config, help2man, liberty (included), termo (included)
Runtime dependencies: ncursesw, libunistring, Lua >= 5.3 (for highlighting)

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/pjanouch/hex.git
$ mkdir hex/build
$ cd hex/build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
$ make

To install the application, you can do either the usual:

# make install

Or you can try telling CMake to make a package for you. For Debian it is:

$ cpack -G DEB
# dpkg -i hex-*.deb

Note that for versions of CMake before 2.8.9, you need to prefix cpack with fakeroot or file ownership will end up wrong.

Having the program installed, optionally create a configuration file and run it on a file of your choice.

Configuration

Create ~/.config/hex/hex.conf with contents like the following:

colors = {
	footer     = ""
	footer_hl  = "bold"
	bar        = "reverse"
	bar_hl     = "reverse bold"
	even       = ""
	odd        = ""
	selection  = "reverse"
}

Terminal caveats

Terminals are somewhat tricky to get consistent results on, so be aware of the following:

• Xterm needs XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true for the default bindings to work

• urxvt’s vtwheel plugin sabotages scrolling

Performance

While the Lua API has been made considerably easy to write new decoders with, the design is far from efficient as we make tons of new formatted strings. Since we need Lua 5.3 features (64-bit integers), LuaJIT can’t help us here.

Similar software

• https://codisec.com/veles/ can also highlight files but it’s not scriptable

• https://bitbucket.org/haypo/hachoir/wiki/Home seems to be strictly hierarchical, which may not work for file formats like ELF

Contributing and Support

Use this project’s GitHub to report any bugs, request features, or submit pull requests. If you want to discuss this project, or maybe just hang out with the developer, feel free to join me at irc://irc.janouch.name, channel #dev.

Bitcoin donations: 12r5uEWEgcHC46xd64tt3hHt9EUvYYDHe9

License

This software is released under the terms of the 0BSD license, the text of which is included within the package along with the list of authors.