xxd

XXD(1) General Commands Manual XXD(1)

NAME
xxd - make a hexdump or do the reverse.

SYNOPSIS
xxd -h[elp]
xxd [options] [infile [outfile]]
xxd -r[evert] [options] [infile [outfile]]

DESCRIPTION
xxd creates a hex dump of a given file or standard input. It can also convert a hex dump back to its original binary form. Like uuen‐
code(1) and uudecode(1) it allows the transmission of binary data in a `mail-safe’ ASCII representation, but has the advantage of decoding
to standard output. Moreover, it can be used to perform binary file patching.

OPTIONS
If no infile is given, standard input is read. If infile is specified as a -' character, then input is taken from standard input. If no
outfile is given (or a-’ character is in its place), results are sent to standard output.

   Note that a "lazy" parser is used which does not check for more than the first option letter, unless the option is followed by a  parameter.
   Spaces  between  a  single  option letter and its parameter are optional.  Parameters to options can be specified in decimal, hexadecimal or
   octal notation.  Thus -c8, -c 8, -c 010 and -cols 8 are all equivalent.

   -a | -autoskip
          toggle autoskip: A single '*' replaces nul-lines.  Default off.

   -b | -bits
          Switch to bits (binary digits) dump, rather than hexdump.  This option writes octets as eight digits "1"s and "0"s instead of a  nor‐
          mal  hexadecimal dump. Each line is preceded by a line number in hexadecimal and followed by an ascii (or ebcdic) representation. The
          command line switches -r, -p, -i do not work with this mode.
          【备注】：二进制输出，而不是16进制输出。

   -c cols | -cols cols
          format <cols> octets per line. Default 16 (-i: 12, -ps: 30, -b: 6). Max 256.
          【备注】：每行格式化显示的字节个数，默认是16。对于-i选项，默认是12；对于-ps选项，默认是30；对于-b选项，即二进制输出，默认是6。cols的最大值为256。

   -E | -EBCDIC
          Change the character encoding in the righthand column from ASCII to EBCDIC.  This does not change the hexadecimal representation. The
          option is meaningless in combinations with -r, -p or -i.

   -g bytes | -groupsize bytes
          separate  the  output of every <bytes> bytes (two hex characters or eight bit-digits each) by a whitespace.  Specify -g 0 to suppress
          grouping.  <Bytes> defaults to 2 in normal mode and 1 in bits mode.  Grouping does not apply to postscript or include style.
          【备注】：输出显示时，每<bytes>个字节用一个空格隔开。
          正常模式下是2个字节。如：304e 3220 3f6e 505c
          二进制模式下是1个字节，如：00000001 11001000 11111010 0011001110

   -h | -help
          print a summary of available commands and exit.  No hex dumping is performed.

   -i | -include
          output in C include file style. A complete static array definition is written (named after the input file),  unless  xxd  reads  from  stdin.
          【备注】：以C语言输出包含文件样式。 写入完整的静态数组定义（数组名以输入文件命名），除非xxd读取
          标准输入。例如：xxd -i ./Makefile，输出如下：

unsigned char __Makefile[] = {
0x23, 0x23, 0x23, 0x20, 0x44, 0x4f, 0x20, 0x4e, 0x4f, 0x54, 0x20, 0x45,
0x44, 0x49, 0x54, 0x20, 0x54, 0x48, 0x49, 0x53, 0x20, 0x46, 0x49, 0x4c,
0x45, 0x20, 0x23, 0x23, 0x23, 0x0a, 0x69, 0x6e, 0x63, 0x6c, 0x75, 0x64,
0x65, 0x20, 0x62, 0x75, 0x69, 0x6c, 0x64, 0x2f, 0x63, 0x6f, 0x72, 0x65,
0x2f, 0x6d, 0x61, 0x69, 0x6e, 0x2e, 0x6d, 0x6b, 0x0a, 0x23, 0x23, 0x23,
0x20, 0x44, 0x4f, 0x20, 0x4e, 0x4f, 0x54, 0x20, 0x45, 0x44, 0x49, 0x54,
0x20, 0x54, 0x48, 0x49, 0x53, 0x20, 0x46, 0x49, 0x4c, 0x45, 0x20, 0x23,
0x23, 0x23, 0x0a
};
unsigned int __Makefile_len = 87;

   -l len | -len len
          stop after writing <len> octets.
          【备注】：只显示<len>这么多字节

   -p | -ps | -postscript | -plain
          output in postscript continuous hexdump style. Also known as plain hexdump style.
          【备注】：以连续的16进制表示显示，没有空格。如：304e32203f6e505c

   -r | -revert
          reverse  operation:  convert (or patch) hexdump into binary.  If not writing to stdout, xxd writes into its output file without trun‐
          cating it. Use the combination -r -p to read plain hexadecimal dumps without line number information and without a particular  column
          layout. Additional Whitespace and line-breaks are allowed anywhere.

   -seek offset
          When used after -r: revert with <offset> added to file positions found in hexdump.

   -s [+][-]seek
          start  at <seek> bytes abs. (or rel.) infile offset.  + indicates that the seek is relative to the current stdin file position (mean‐
          ingless when not reading from stdin).  - indicates that the seek should be that many characters from the end of the input (or if com‐
          bined with +: before the current stdin file position).  Without -s option, xxd starts at the current file position.

   -u     use upper case hex letters. Default is lower case.
   【备注】：显示大写的十六进制字母。默认为小写字母

   -v | -version
          show version string.

CAVEATS
xxd -r has some builtin magic while evaluating line number information. If the output file is seekable, then the linenumbers at the start
of each hexdump line may be out of order, lines may be missing, or overlapping. In these cases xxd will lseek(2) to the next position. If
the output file is not seekable, only gaps are allowed, which will be filled by null-bytes.

   xxd -r never generates parse errors. Garbage is silently skipped.

   When  editing  hexdumps,  please  note  that xxd -r skips everything on the input line after reading enough columns of hexadecimal data (see
   option -c). This also means, that changes to the printable ascii (or ebcdic) columns are always ignored. Reverting a plain  (or  postscript)
   style  hexdump with xxd -r -p does not depend on the correct number of columns. Here anything that looks like a pair of hex-digits is inter‐
   preted.

   Note the difference between
   % xxd -i file
   and
   % xxd -i < file

   xxd -s +seek may be different from xxd -s seek, as lseek(2) is used to "rewind" input.  A '+' makes a difference  if  the  input  source  is
   stdin,  and if stdin's file position is not at the start of the file by the time xxd is started and given its input.  The following examples
   may help to clarify (or further confuse!)...

   Rewind stdin before reading; needed because the `cat' has already read to the end of stdin.
   % sh -c "cat > plain_copy; xxd -s 0 > hex_copy" < file

   Hexdump from file position 0x480 (=1024+128) onwards.  The `+' sign means "relative to the current position", thus the `128' adds to the  1k
   where dd left off.
   % sh -c "dd of=plain_snippet bs=1k count=1; xxd -s +128 > hex_snippet" < file

   Hexdump from file position 0x100 ( = 1024-768) on.
   % sh -c "dd of=plain_snippet bs=1k count=1; xxd -s +-768 > hex_snippet" < file

   However,  this  is  a rare situation and the use of `+' is rarely needed.  The author prefers to monitor the effect of xxd with strace(1) or
   truss(1), whenever -s is used.

EXAMPLES
Print everything but the first three lines (hex 0x30 bytes) of file.
% xxd -s 0x30 file

   Print 3 lines (hex 0x30 bytes) from the end of file.
   % xxd -s -0x30 file

   Print 120 bytes as continuous hexdump with 20 octets per line.
   % xxd -l 120 -ps -c 20 xxd.1
   2e54482058584420312022417567757374203139
   39362220224d616e75616c207061676520666f72
   20787864220a2e5c220a2e5c222032317374204d
   617920313939360a2e5c22204d616e2070616765
   20617574686f723a0a2e5c2220202020546f6e79
   204e7567656e74203c746f6e79407363746e7567

   Hexdump the first 120 bytes of this man page with 12 octets per line.
   % xxd -l 120 -c 12 xxd.1
   0000000: 2e54 4820 5858 4420 3120 2241  .TH XXD 1 "A
   000000c: 7567 7573 7420 3139 3936 2220  ugust 1996"
   0000018: 224d 616e 7561 6c20 7061 6765  "Manual page
   0000024: 2066 6f72 2078 7864 220a 2e5c   for xxd"..\
   0000030: 220a 2e5c 2220 3231 7374 204d  "..\" 21st M
   000003c: 6179 2031 3939 360a 2e5c 2220  ay 1996..\"
   0000048: 4d61 6e20 7061 6765 2061 7574  Man page aut
   0000054: 686f 723a 0a2e 5c22 2020 2020  hor:..\"
   0000060: 546f 6e79 204e 7567 656e 7420  Tony Nugent
   000006c: 3c74 6f6e 7940 7363 746e 7567  <tony@sctnug

   Display just the date from the file xxd.1
   % xxd -s 0x36 -l 13 -c 13 xxd.1
   0000036: 3231 7374 204d 6179 2031 3939 36  21st May 1996

   Copy input_file to output_file and prepend 100 bytes of value 0x00.
   % xxd input_file | xxd -r -s 100 > output_file

   Patch the date in the file xxd.1
   % echo "0000037: 3574 68" | xxd -r - xxd.1
   % xxd -s 0x36 -l 13 -c 13 xxd.1
   0000036: 3235 7468 204d 6179 2031 3939 36  25th May 1996

   Create a 65537 byte file with all bytes 0x00, except for the last one which is 'A' (hex 0x41).
   % echo "010000: 41" | xxd -r > file

   Hexdump this file with autoskip.
   % xxd -a -c 12 file
   0000000: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ............
   *
   000fffc: 0000 0000 40                   ....A

   Create a 1 byte file containing a single 'A' character.  The number after '-r -s' adds to the linenumbers found in the file; in effect,  the
   leading bytes are suppressed.
   % echo "010000: 41" | xxd -r -s -0x10000 > file

   Use xxd as a filter within an editor such as vim(1) to hexdump a region marked between `a' and `z'.
   :'a,'z!xxd

   Use xxd as a filter within an editor such as vim(1) to recover a binary hexdump marked between `a' and `z'.
   :'a,'z!xxd -r

   Use xxd as a filter within an editor such as vim(1) to recover one line of a hexdump.  Move the cursor over the line and type:
   !!xxd -r

   Read single characters from a serial line
   % xxd -c1 < /dev/term/b &
   % stty < /dev/term/b -echo -opost -isig -icanon min 1
   % echo -n foo > /dev/term/b

RETURN VALUES
The following error values are returned:

   0      no errors encountered.

   -1     operation not supported ( xxd -r -i still impossible).

   1      error while parsing options.

   2      problems with input file.

   3      problems with output file.

   4,5    desired seek position is unreachable.

SEE ALSO
uuencode(1), uudecode(1), patch(1)

WARNINGS
The tools weirdness matches its creators brain. Use entirely at your own risk. Copy files. Trace it. Become a wizard.

VERSION
This manual page documents xxd version 1.7

AUTHOR
(c) 1990-1997 by Juergen Weigert
jnweiger@informatik.uni-erlangen.de

   Distribute freely and credit me,
   make money and share with me,
   lose money and don't ask me.

   Manual page started by Tony Nugent
   <tony@sctnugen.ppp.gu.edu.au> <T.Nugent@sct.gu.edu.au>
   Small changes by Bram Moolenaar.  Edited by Juergen Weigert.

Manual page for xxd August 1996 XXD(1)