Using vi to edit binary files

At this point, you can view or edit any of the hex data. The ASCII representation is listed to the right, though editing this region will not affect the hex portion of the file. To do this, you run things through xxd again, but this time with the -r option:. Your file should be returned to illegible gibberish, which you can save back out with :wq. Our websites use cookies to improve your browsing experience. Some of these are essential for the basic functionalities of our websites.

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Learn more. How can I use Vim as a hex editor? Asked 6 years, 10 months ago. Active 1 year, 10 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. Peter Mortensen 6 6 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. A 6e6f c e a e nother line. And e 6f74 a yet another. Improve this answer. I've included the relevant code for that here, in case anyone wants it. It too is based on the xxd tool. I'm sure the GitHub version I linked above works better, but I haven't actually used it myself, so I figured I'd also post this one which I know for sure works.

The source for this other version was the vim wikia, specifically this page. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How to edit binary files with Vim? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 11 months ago.

Active 1 year, 10 months ago. Viewed k times. Is there a way to edit binary files in some kind of hexadecimal mode? Improve this question. Martin Tournoij Add a comment.

Active Oldest Votes. The simplest way is to use the binary option. From :help binary : This option should be set before editing a binary file. You can also use the -b Vim argument. The 'fileencoding' and 'fileencodings' options will not be used, the file is read without conversion. See the 'endofline' option. More advanced: xxd You can use the xxd 1 tool to convert a file to more readable format, and this is the important bit , parse the edited "readable format" and write it back as binary data.

If not writing to stdout, xxd writes into its output file without truncating it. Additional Whitespace and line-breaks are allowed anywhere. Improve this answer. Martin Tournoij Martin Tournoij Lovely answer, but should probably start with "Don't try this at home, kids! What if I need to remove some bytes? I don't know what Vim is doing, but it's adding 95KB of text to a KB binary file despite me having changed nothing.