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I'm trying to get the output of my hexdump command to look similar to hexedit default. I've been playing with the format strings using -e, but since there are not very good documentation, that visually describe how to use it, I am failing to get it right.

Currently, I have:

# hexdump -C -n 0x100 m1.bin
00000090  00 00 00 00 00 56 08 00  00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00  |.....V..........|
000000a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|

But I would like to have it with one more space separating the 4 bytes, like this: 

00000090  00 00 00 00  00 56 08 00  00 00 00 00  04 00 00 00  |.....V..........|
000000a0  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  |................|

alternatively like this: 

00000090  0000 0000  0056 0800  0000 0000  0400 0000  |.....V..........|
000000a0  0000 0000  0000 0000  0000 0000  0000 0000  |................|

Also, if it would be possible to get some color, that would be really great. So far I haven't been able to get any color at all from hexdump.

EDIT

Also great for piping is to leave out address, char field and newlines (\n) with:

# hexdump -e '16/1 "%04.2x"' -n 40 m1.bin
  54  4f  43  00  00  00  00  00  00  00  00  00  00  00  00 ...
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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

Not that simple nor obvious... try

 hexdump -v  -e '"%08.8_ax  "' -e' 4/1 "%02x " "  " 4/1 "%02x " "  "  4/1 "%02x " "  " 4/1 "%02x "  ' -e '" |" 16/1 "%_p" "|\n"' file
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3
  • 1
    That is insane! Ok, thank you so much for that, it must have taken you a lot of trial and error. I owe you a drink!
    – not2qubit
    Oct 17, 2018 at 22:27
  • 1
    Actually, as always in IT and life, once you've understood the principle, it's getting easier and faster.
    – RudiC
    Oct 17, 2018 at 22:31
  • Yeah, I just got the hang of it and the coloring of byte-sequences is very cool. I wish the man pages would have had better examples, as it would have saved me years of piping to grep using custom terminal color settings.
    – not2qubit
    Oct 24, 2018 at 9:03
3

Instead of using hex dump I would suggest using xxd like this:

xxd <bin_name>
00000000: cffa edfe 0700 0001 0300 0080 0200 0000  ................
00000010: 1000 0000 d006 0000 8580 2100 0000 0000  ..........!.....
00000020: 1900 0000 4800 0000 5f5f 5041 4745 5a45  ....H...__PAGEZE
00000030: 524f 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  RO..............
00000040: 0000 0000 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................

If you want | around the ascii letters at the last, try this:

xxd <bin_name> |  sed -r 's/(................)$/|\1|/g'
00000000: cffa edfe 0700 0001 0300 0080 0200 0000  |................|
00000010: 1000 0000 d006 0000 8580 2100 0000 0000  |..........!.....|
00000020: 1900 0000 4800 0000 5f5f 5041 4745 5a45  |....H...__PAGEZE|
00000030: 524f 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  |RO..............|
00000040: 0000 0000 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  |................|
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