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Hexplorer is a program used to edit files. Contrary to text
editors, or graphic editors, Hexplorer doesn't format file content, but it
displays it as it is, that is as binary data, allowing you to edit it hexadecimally or like text
editor does, so it gives you low level access to each kind of file,
providing many tools to operate on data.
Main goal while developing this editor was innovative visualisation
and interpretation of binary data and that is what distinguishes it from other similar programs.
This program was created
as an answer to my needs, I hope you'll find it useful too. I would be
very pleased if you wrote to me and send suggestions and bug reports, I
could improve and debug this program better then. |
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File opened with Hexplorer is seen in two panels. On left hand in
hexadecimal form, and on the right hand as text interpretation of bytes.
Their color corresponds with values of bytes, however this can be disabled
if you don't like it (Select Options dialog from View menu). Clicking on
hexadecimal or text panel places cursor in desired position and panel.
Dragging mouse or clicking with [Shift] pressed makes a selection of
bytes. You enter data in hexadecimal panel by entering digits 0 to 9 and
letters A to F, and in text panel by entering all alfanumerical signs.
Some special signs can be also entered in text mode if they are not
reserved for program commands, for example [Ctrl+X] is 18h byte, but
[Ctrl+Z] is reserved for Undo command. Pressing [Insert] button switches
data enterance mode from insert to overwrite. Unlike to other programs
this mode affects also Paste function. It inserts or writes over data
depending on current mode. Some standard viewing keys are available. These
are [PgUp], [PgDn], [Home] - jumps to begining of file, [End] - jumps to
end of file. Pressing [Tab] switches panel. Right mouse button pops up
context menu with some instant functions available. In the status bar you
can see whether editor is in insert or overwrite mode, current position in
a file, size of selection, value of byte, word, double word, quad
(depending on selection), size of file and whether the file has been saved
or not. |
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Almost every program option is accessible from menu and some of them
are replicated on tool bar and in the context menus. Some commands are
also accessible with keyboard shortcuts. Take a look at the program's main
menu to find out these shortcuts. Note that some toolbar buttons also
react to right mouse button click, what pops up context menu with
functions somewhat related to the buttons main function. For example right
clicking on Open button pops up menu with recently edited files. Here is a
description of program functions which differ to other applications. I'll
skip some obvious functions like Open or Save.
- File:
- New - Creates new, empty file. If you want to fill it at
startup (with zeros for example), use Paste Chain from Edit menu.
- Open...
- Reload - Reload actually edited file. All changes are
immediatelly discarded.
- Save
- Save As...
- Execute - Creates temporary image of the file in Hexplorer
directory and executes it. If it's image, sound, www page, then
default application associated with this file will open the file, an
executalbe file (EXE) will be executed.
- Recent - clicking one of these recently edited files opens
it.
- Print... - In a standard print dialog you can choose to
print entire file or selected bytes only.
- Date, Time and Attributes - Opens dialog window, where you
can change attributes, dates and times of currently edited file.
Changes on disk are made right after pressing OK button.
- Import
- Imports binary data saved in various formats:
- Ascii Hex
- Atmel Generic
- DEC Binary (XXDP)
- Elektor Monitor (EMON52)
- LSI Logic Fast Load
- Four Packed Code (FPC)
- Intel Hex
- MOS Technologies
- Motorola S-Record
- OS65V Loader
- Signetics
- SPASM
- Tektronix hexadecimal
- Tektronix Extended hexadecimal
- Texas Instruments Tagged
- Wilson
- RCA Cosmac
- Fairchild Fairbug
- Formatted Binary
- Needham
- Spectrum
This impressive list of accepted formats is thanks to great library
Srecord made by Peter Miller.
- Export - data can be exported to as much file formats
as it can be imported, see the list for Import function.
- Exit
- Disk:
- (...) - List of disks available to access. After selecting one of them
choose starting sector and number of sectors to read into memory.
Disk access is available in fully 32-bit operating systems like Windows(R) NT/2000/XP.
Additionally you must have administator privileges to access a disk.
- Next sector(s) - Reads following sector(s) into memory.
- Previous sector(s) - Reads preceding sector(s) into memory.
- Write sector(s) - Writes sectors from memory back to disk. If you changed
size of edited data it won't affect number of bytes that is to be written which
is equal to the number that has been read.
- Edit:
- Undo
- Cut
- Copy
- Copy As - formates and copies selection of bytes to text
clipboard. Data can be formated to a C/C++ data, hexadecimal numbers,
assembler source or data or text filtered from selection. The
selection can also be copied to a new file.
- Paste/Writeover - this function is affected by
insert/overwrite mode.
- Paste MRU - Pops up context menu with most recently used
hex strings, so you can choose one of them to paste it.
- Paste external text
- As Is - Sometimes you may want to copy text from other
editor to Hexplorer. Use this function then.
- As hex numbers - Interpretes text in the text clipboard
as hexadecimal numbers and pastes interpreted this way bytes. Sample
usage of this function is when you have C or assembler source with
bytes typed as text like "0x345a, (...)" or "db 71h, a2h, (...)" and
you want to paste them into currently edited file as normal bytes,
not as text. Note that these sample languages have big-endian
numbers parser, so 0x345a is 5a34 word in computers memory. This
cause problems if you convert not single bytes, but words or double
words. Use Swap Bytes functions to fix this.
- As floats - This is very like above. It parses text
clipboard for floating point numbers and pastes it into binary file
as single precision floating point IEEE encoded number.
- As doubles - Just like above except it pastes data as
doubles.
- As bytes - Converts decimal numbers in clipboard to
bytes. For example such sentence "5, 16 255 anything 5.34" will be
interpreted as bytes "05 10 FF 05" and pasted into file. Functions
below differ only in size reserved for each number being parsed.
- As words
- As double words
- Delete
- Select All
- Paste Chain... - Pastes byte string many times. In dialog,
which opens after you select this command you can enter bytes in text
form or as hexadecimal string. Similar way of entering data appears in
Find, Replace, Highlight String and many other dialogs in this
program. When you choose number of reapeats and press OK, string will
be pasted starting from cursor position. For example, entering text
string "kitty." what corresponds to byte string "6B697474792E" and
choosing to repeat it 3 times, will paste into cursor string
"kitty.kitty.kitty".
- Operation
- Reset Selection - Fills selection with zeros.
- Fill Selection... - Eradicates selection by filling it
with byte string. It is somewhat similar to Paste Chain command, but
it overwrites selected bytes by new string, instead of inserting new
bytes.
- Pseudo Random Numbers - Fills selection with pseudo
random bytes. Uses fast Lagged Fibonacci RNG algorithm.
- XOR Selection... - This is very like Fill Selection but
it performs XOR (exclusive or) operation on selection and source
pattern.
- OR Selection... - This performs OR operation. There is
many applications for this function. For example to set the least
significant bit of bytes in selection OR it with byte 1.
- AND Selection... - This performs AND operation. AND is
often used to put bit masks. Example: to reset every other byte in
selection AND it with word FF00h.
- Increment Byte(s) - Increments selected bytes by 1.
- Decrement Byte(s) - Decrements selected bytes by 1.
- Negate Selection - reverses bits in selection.
- Swap Bytes (16 bits)
- Swap Bytes (32 bits) - All Swap Bytes functions are
usually used to convert integer numbers from big-endian to
little-endian and vice versa.
- Swap Bytes (64 bits)
- Flip Bytes - Flips bytes in selection. For example
"12345" will be changed to "54321".
- Find... - Standard find dialog, except for Find All
function whitch places all results in Navigator tool window, where you
can quickly find out their positions, number and jump through them.
Uses fast Boyer Moore algorithm.
- Replace... - Another standard dialog. The only difference
to other applications is that, as in almost every dialog in Hexplorer,
you can enter data as text or as hexadecimal number.
- Find Next
- Find Previous
- View:
- Go To Address... - Jumps to hexadecimally or decimally
entered position. Additionally you can save choosen position to
quickly access it with Go To Position #n commands and you can add a
comment which appears by the address when you right click on it and in
the Navigator window. Jump may be relative to cursor, begining or end
of file. You may capture address cursor is pointing at by ckicking
button From cursor.
- Go To - Position #n - Jumps to selected position. Use
Remember As function or Go To Address dialog to set these bookmarks.
Use Ctrl+#n to quickly jump to bookmark #n.
- Remember As - Position #n - Saves actual cursor position in
selected bookmark.
- Highlight String - Lets you choose up to three (named:
alpha, beta and gamma) hex strings that will be highlighted while
editing. To disable highlight, select string from combo box, type
nothing and press OK.
- Simple Data Types - In a tool window displays numerical
interpretation of bytes as simple data types such as integer or float.
Double clicking on selected type allows to change its value.
- Pixel View - Displays grafical interpretations of bytes in
a tool window. It can be useful for finding data patterns or images in
a file. First button lets you set the bits per pixel value. You can
also set the column width to adjust view - enter new value and press
Set button.
- Disassembler - Tries to disassemble bytes interpreting
them as Intel opcodes. Clicking on instruction highlights it's code
and double-clicking jumps to that instruction. The disassembler
code is from libdisasm library.
If you wish to copy disassembled
code to clipboard, select the machine code and use function Edit/Copy As/Disassembled code.
- Navigator - Opens tool window displaying all remembered
positions in a file. It displays its global address, address relative
to cursor and comment. Double clicking on a position causes jump to
it. Upper button changes base of values of addresses. Lower button
resets selected position.
- Windows Calculator - runs MS Windows(R) Calculator, you can
make simple calculations and base convertions with it.
- Options - In options dialog you can adjust fonts and colors
(six color schemes available) the program uses, set the number of
columns, set number by which columns are grouped together or enable
automatic column number option, which adjust column number to current
window size, and a number of minor options.
- Fullscreen
- Structures:
- (List of structures) - Clicking one of them opens new
Structure Viewer window displaying that structure. Structure is a
conglomerate of simple data types in memory or in file. (well, that is
structure in this program, in programming languages structures may
also contain other structures.) If you know structure, meaning of its
members and it's position in a file you can quickly access it with
this tool. Structures are stored in file structures.dat in program
directory. In the left upper corner of the tool window from a combo
box you can choose other structure from the list of available
structures. On the right of the combo size of a structure is
displayed. In the right upper corner there are 5 buttons:
- 1-st deletes current structure.
- 2-nd adds new member to the structure. In a dialog you can
choose its name, type and count. If count is other than 1, it will
be an array of the choosen type. The member is inserted at the
selected position, if no member is selected, new member is inserted
at the end of members list.
- 3-rd removes selected structure member.
- 4-th clones(duplicates) selected member.
- 5-th changes the base of displayed values.
Below there
is a list of structure members. Clicking a member highlights its
position in a file, double clicking it, allows to change its value.
- Add New... - Creates new structure.
- Crypto
- Encryption - Encrypts or decrypts selected data with
password. Programs pseudo random number generator is seeded with
passwords crc and its output is xored to data. Encryption is very
fast.
- Find Pattern - Find repeating data patterns in selected
fragment of file. In a tool dialog you can set minimal and maximal
length of analised strings, difference between these numbers is
significant to calculation time, except for analised data size of
course. Listbox below displays results with least entropy. Entropy
is in bytes, and it is difference between strings whith analised
lengths. Example: entropy is zero for 3 bytes long strings in
"tektektektektektektek", it is two for 5 bytes long strings in
"aaaa.aaab.aaac.".
- Fourier transform - generates frequency domain of a
function. To do this, it decomposes function into sinusoids
(cosinusoids) of different frequency, which sum to the original input.
The frequency visualisation you see in Winamp is discrete Fourier
transform of sound wave you are listening to. For more information see
Fourier transform related links. In the listbox of
this tool the sinusoids with greatest amplitude are shown sorted with
their frequency described as bytes, words, floating-points or anything
you want the data to be treatened as (adjustable from the combo-box
above the list). The first button selects all file to calculate and
the second saves all transform, including points not shown in the
list, in a text file, which you can draw as charts in MS(R) Excel or
gnuplot.
- File Type - Tries to recognize file type by its header.
- Checksum - Counts checksum of selected bytes, to count
whole file checksum - press [Ctrl+A] in editor. Checksums are
generated by xoring following bytes to a 8, 16, 32 or 64 bit number.
Two CRC16 checksums and CRC32 are also generated. Intialization value
for all CRC generators is 0xff(ff). SHA1, RD5 and RIPEMD hash
functions are calculated. Double clicking on selected value copies it
to clipboard.
- Byte occurence - counts occurences of bytes in selection.
Double clicking on selected byte highlights it in whole file.
- Macros:
- (...) - List of hem files containing macros in Hexplorer
directory. Choosing one of them runs a macro selected times number.
Macro is a series of key presses saved in a file. Warning: macro may
work different with different column number set. This is because when
you press for example down button, it increases position in a file by
column number. If you want to make macro more flexible avoid using
up/down and pgup/pdgn keys while recording.
- Record - After choosing a file, begins recording of keys
pressed. Mouse events are not saved.
- Stop - Stops macro recording.
- Help:
- Help
- Go To Homepage
- Report a bug
- Check for newer version - this tries to download the newest
version of Hexplorer, however this might be a problem when the server
is down, and this will happen some day...
- About...
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