You could also write a hex dump perl module for your mom. Or show her an existing one (or two).

These are available on CPAN and on ActiveState PPM:

#!perl -w

use strict;

my $buf = "Look, Ma:\nfoo\tbar\tsee those tabs?\nFOO   BAR  look here 
+- no tabs, just spaces.\n";
print "$buf\n";

use Data::HexDump;
print "HexDump:\n", HexDump "$buf";

use Data::Hexdumper;
print "Hexdumper:\n", Data::Hexdumper::Hexdump(data => $buf);
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Rudif