How to view files in binary from bash? - bash

Question

I would like to view the contents of a file in the current directory, but in binary from the command line. How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

xxd does both binary and hexadecimal.
bin:
xxd -b file
hex:
xxd file

Answer 2

hexdump -C yourfile.bin
unless you want to edit it of course. Most linux distros have hexdump by default (but obviously not all).

Answer 3

vi your_filename
hit esc
Type :%!xxd to view the hex strings, the n :%!xxd -r to return to normal editing.

Answer 4

As a fallback there's always od -xc filename

Answer 5

sudo apt-get install bless
Bless is GUI tool which can view, edit, seach and a lot more.
Its very light weight.

Answer 6

If you want to open binary files (in CentOS 7):
strings <binary_filename>

Answer 7

$ echo -n 'Hello world!' | hd
00000000 48 65 6c 6c 6f 20 77 6f 72 6c 64 21 |Hello world!|
0000000c

Answer 8

Hexyl formats nicely: sudo apt install hexyl

Answer 9

See Improved Hex editing in the Vim Tips Wiki.

Answer 10

You can open emacs (in terminal mode, using emacs -nw for instance), and then use Hexl mode: M-x hexl-mode.
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Editing-Binary-Files.html

Answer 11

To get the output all in a single line in Hexadecimal:
xxd -p yourfile.bin | tr -d '\n'

Answer 12

to convert a file to its binary codes(hexadecimal representation) we say:
xxd filename #
e.g:
xxd hello.c #
to see all the contents and codes in a binary file , we could use commands like readelf and objdump, hexdump ,... .
for example if we want to see all the convert all the contents of a binary file(executable, shared libraries, object files) we say:
hexdump binaryfilename
e.g.
hexdump /bin/bash
but readelf is the best utility for analyzing elf(executable and linking format) files. so if we say:
readelf -a /bin/bash
all the contents in the binary file bash would be shown to us, also we could provide different flags for readelf to see all the sections and headers of an elf file separately, for example if we want to see only the elf header we say:
readelf -h /bin/bash
for reading all the segments of the file:
readelf -l /bin/bash
for reading all the sections of the file:
readelf -S /bin/sh
but again as summary , for reading a normal file like "hello.c" and a binary file like bash in path /bin/bash in linux we say:
xxd hello.c
readelf -a /bin/bash

Answer 13

You can use hexdump binary file
sudo apt-get install hexdump
hexdump -C yourfile.bin