Package: bsdmainutils Version: 6.1.10 Severity: normal
The 'man hexdump' description of the '-e' option and its format strings is rather obscure; though there are some examples for the '-f' option, there's none for '-e'. No patch today -- some lively quotes, followed by some useful '-e' examples. Readers that don't like complaints should please skip ahead to the examples. Disgruntled users: Manual on How to Use the Hexdump Unix Utility Every time I go to use hexdump I find myself stumbling over its bizarre argument format and ineffectual manual. Because I look at binary files often I decided to work up this page more for myself than anyone else.... http://256.com/gray/docs/misc/hexdump_manual_how_to.html Need help with hexdump -e Date: 25 Oct 2004 10:45:08 -0700 Can someone tell me where I can find *good* documentation for the hexdump command? I've been trying for the past half hour to understand the -e format string.... http://www.dbforums.com/archive/index.php/t-1049742.html Incomprehensive Hexdump Man Page THE HEXDUMP MAN page, I find, is not the best written example of an applications manual. {...} WTF!? Near having a fury induced head explosion I resolved to Google. Seems that I'm not the only one having a hard time decoding the '-e' description {...} Eventually I found some indications that, to get the desired formatting, I should utilize some of the non-fprintf formatting options provided by hexdump. More man page decoding? No fucking way! Enough of this shit! Having wasted precious work time, I abandoned hexdump and put together a little Lua script that would do the hex dumping and format the output to fit my requirements. {...} http://monzool.net/blog/2008/02/18/incomprehensive-hexdump-man-page/ Examples (with thanks to the folks who wrote the above URLs): # hex bytes % echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X "' ; echo 68 65 6C 6C 6F 0A # same, with ASCII section % echo hello | hexdump -e '8/1 "%02X ""\t"" "' -e '8/1 "%c""\n"' 68 65 6C 6C 6F 0A hello # hex with preceding 'x' % echo hello | hexdump -v -e '"x" 1/1 "%02X" " "' ; echo x68 x65 x6C x6C x6F x0A # one hex byte per line % echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X\n"' 68 65 6C 6C 6F 0A # a table of byte#, hex, decimal, octal, ASCII % echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%_ad# "' \ -e '/1 "%02X hex"' \ -e '/1 " = %03i dec"' \ -e '/1 " = %03o oct"' \ -e '/1 " = _%c\_\n"' 0# 68 hex = 104 dec = 150 oct = _h_ 1# 65 hex = 101 dec = 145 oct = _e_ 2# 6C hex = 108 dec = 154 oct = _l_ 3# 6C hex = 108 dec = 154 oct = _l_ 4# 6F hex = 111 dec = 157 oct = _o_ 5# 0A hex = 010 dec = 012 oct = _ _ # byte# & ASCII with control chars % echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%_ad# "' -e '/1 " _%_u\_\n"' 0# _h_ 1# _e_ 2# _l_ 3# _l_ 4# _o_ 5# _lf_ Hope this helps... -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) (ignored: LC_ALL set to C) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages bsdmainutils depends on: ii bsdutils 1:2.13.1.1-1 Basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite ii debianutils 2.30 Miscellaneous utilities specific t ii libc6 2.7-12 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libncurses5 5.6+20080621-2 shared libraries for terminal hand bsdmainutils recommends no packages. -- debconf information excluded -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]