Hexdump

hexdump is used to look inside binary files. hexdump can display in many different ways.

Here's a selection from typing: hexdump -C /bin/bash

00096160 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  01 00 00 00 03 00 00 00  |................| 00096170  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  24 4c 09 00 db 00 00 00  |........$L......| 00096180 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................| 00096190  00 2e 73 68 73 74 72 74  61 62 00 2e 69 6e 74 65  |..shstrtab..inte| 000961a0 72 70 00 2e 6e 6f 74 65  2e 41 42 49 2d 74 61 67  |rp..note.ABI-tag| 000961b0 00 2e 68 61 73 68 00 2e  64 79 6e 73 79 6d 00 2e  |..hash..dynsym..|

Each hexadecimal character represents 4 bits. Each pair represents a byte.

The columns are as follows:
 * 1) A 32-bit address. (8 hex, *4 bits / hex, = 32 bits)
 * 2) 8 bytes at that address, left-to-right
 * 3) 8 more bytes
 * 4) the same 16 bytes, rendered as a string

Provided by
Most (all?) Linux distributions incorporate this from the [util-linux] project

= See also =


 * khexedit - Shows the same as hexdump and allows for editing.
 * od - Similar program for producing (usually) octal dumps. Can also print hex.