Greg Reagle <greg.rea...@umbc.edu> writes: > I agree that it is a "poor man's" hex editor. I am having fun with it, even > if > it is a toy. I don't have the desire to write a sophisticated hex editor > (besides they already exist). > > I like that the small shell script can turn any editor into a hex editor. > BTW, > if od is replaced with hexdump -C or xxd or GNU od -tx1z, then the ascii will > be in the dump too.
It being in the dump isn't really "enough" - in a real hex editor, you can make changes on the ASCII side and expect them to be reflected in the hex side (and ultimately the binary file), whereas using xxd [etc] means the ASCII side is static and is ignored when read back in. This does have its place, though... It's basically an editor-portable version of the recipe that vim provides for using xxd to "edit" binary files. Which is itself a compelling enough use case for xxd to be included with vim in the first place (as far as I know xxd has no other vim-related purpose). But it's not a hex editor.
