Re^2: What is this question asking?

Yeah, I have never really had the need to work with hexidecimal files so I am sitting there, scratching my head saying "WTF am I supposed to do!".

I tend to prefer having the central hex columns be bytes by default, But just having that together with the ASCII content right along side it is so handy in so many ways...

How does it help you to have both the hex columns AND the ASCII content? They are just different representations of the same information right? I got to be missing something.

Comment on Re^2: What is this question asking?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: What is this question asking? by TimToady (Parson) on Sep 28, 2007 at 14:57 UTC
Pragmatically, when you have a chunk of recognizable text in the right column, it strongly indicates that you should not attempt to interpret the corresponding hex bytes as binary data. And if you don't have text, then it very likely is binary data. In old COBOL programs much of the data is stored as strings (albeit in EBCDIC rather than ASCII), so what this usually tells you is whether you're looking at data or program, which is a very important distinction when you're trying to decipher a core dump. Even if your binary machine code happens to fall in the range of characters, it'll just be gibberish on the right, which tells you at a glance that it's probably not text.	[reply]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re^3: What is this question asking?
by TimToady (Parson) on Sep 28, 2007 at 14:57 UTC

Pragmatically, when you have a chunk of recognizable text in the right column, it strongly indicates that you should not attempt to interpret the corresponding hex bytes as binary data. And if you don't have text, then it very likely is binary data. In old COBOL programs much of the data is stored as strings (albeit in EBCDIC rather than ASCII), so what this usually tells you is whether you're looking at data or program, which is a very important distinction when you're trying to decipher a core dump. Even if your binary machine code happens to fall in the range of characters, it'll just be gibberish on the right, which tells you at a glance that it's probably not text.

[reply]