hexdump

NAME

hexdump - ascii, decimal, hexadecimal, octal dump

SYNOPSIS

hexdump [-bcdovx] [-e format_string] [-f format_file]
		[-n length] -words [-s skip] file ...

DESCRIPTION

The hexdump(1) utility is a filter that displays the specified files, or the standard input if no files are specified, in a user-specified format.

OPTIONS

-b: One-byte octal display. Display the input offset in hexadecimal, followed by sixteen, space-separated, three-column, zero-filled bytes of input data, in octal, per line.
-c: One-byte character display. Display the input offset in hexadecimal, followed by sixteen, space-separated, three -column, space-filled characters of input data per line.
-d: Two-byte decimal display. Display the input offset in hexadecimal, followed by eight, space-separated, five-column, zero-filled, two-byte units of input data, in unsigned decimal, per line.
-e format_string: Specify an fprintf(3)-style format string to be used for displaying data.
-f format_file: Specify a file that contains one or more newline separated format strings. Empty lines and lines whose first non-blank character is a hash mark (#) are ignored.
-n length: Interpret only length bytes of input.
-o: Two-byte octal display. Display the input offset in hexadecimal, followed by eight, space-separated, six-column, zero-filled, two-byte quantities of input data, in octal, per line.
-s offset: Skip offset bytes from the beginning of the input. By default, offset is interpreted as a decimal number. With a leading 0x or 0X, offset is interpreted as a hexadecimal number. With a leading 0, offset is interpreted as an octal number. Appending the characters b, k, or m to offset causes it to be interpreted as a multiple of 512, 1024, or 1048576, respectively.
-v: The -v option causes hexdump to display all input data. Without the -v option, any number of groups of output lines, which would be identical to the immediately preceding group of output lines (except for the input offsets), are replaced with a line consisting of a single asterisk.
-x: Two-byte hexadecimal display. Display the input offset in hexadecimal, followed by eight, space-separated, four-column, zero-filled, two-byte quantities of input data, in hexadecimal, per line.

For each input file, hexdump(1) sequentially copies the input to standard output, transforming the data according to the format strings specified by the -e and -f options, in the order in which they were specified. A format string contains any number of format units, separated by white space. A format unit contains up to three items: an iteration count, a byte count, and a format.

The iteration count is an optional, positive integer, which defaults to one. Each format is applied iteration count times.

The byte count is an optional, positive integer. If specified, it defines the number of bytes to be interpreted by each iteration of the format.

If an iteration count, a byte count, or both are specified, a single slash must be placed after the iteration count and/or before the byte count to disambiguate them. Any white space before or after the slash is ignored.

The format is required and must be surrounded by double quotation (" ") marks. It is interpreted as a fprintf(3)-style format string, with the following exceptions:

An asterisk (*) can not be used as a field width or precision.
A byte count or field precision is required for each s conversion character (unlike the fprintf(1) default, which prints the entire string if the precision is unspecified).
The conversion characters h, l, n, p and q are not supported.
The single-character escape sequences described in the ISO/ANSI C standard are supported:

NUL	\0
alert character	\a
backspace	\b
form-feed	\f
newline	\n
carriage return	\r
tab	\t
vertical tab	\v

The hexdump utility also supports the following additional conversion strings:

_a[dox]: Display the input offset, cumulative across input files, of the next byte to be displayed. The appended characters d o and x specify the display base as decimal, octal, or hexadecimal, respectively.
_A[dox]: Identical to the _a conversion string, except that it is only performed once, when all of the input data has been processed.
_c: Output characters in the default character set. Nonprinting characters are displayed in three-character, zero-padded octal, except for those that can be represented by standard escape notation (see above), which are displayed as two-character strings.
_p: Output characters in the default character set. Nonprinting characters are displayed as a single period (.).
_u: Output US ASCII characters, with the exception that control characters, are displayed using the following, lowercase names. Characters greater than 0xff, hexadecimal, are displayed as hexadecimal strings.

000 nul	001 soh	002 stx	003 etx	004 eot	005 enq
006 ack	007 bel	008 bs	009 ht	00A lf	00B vt
00C ff	00D cr	00E so	00F si	010 dle	011 dc1
012 dc2	013 dc3	014 dc4	015 nak	016 syn	017 etb
018 can	019 em	01A sub	01B esc	01C fs	01D gs
01E rs	01F us	0FF del

The default and supported byte counts for the conversion characters are as follows:

%_c, %_p, %_u, %c	One-byte counts only.
%d, %i, %o, %u, %X, %x	Four-byte default; one-, two-, and four-byte counts supported.
%E, %e, %f, %G, %g	Eight-byte default; four-byte counts supported.

The amount of data interpreted by each format string is the sum of the data required by each format unit, which is the iteration count times the byte count, or the iteration count times the number of bytes required by the format if the byte count is not specified.

The input is manipulated in blocks, where a block is defined as the largest amount of data specified by any format string. Format strings interpreting less than an input-block's worth of data, whose last format unit both interprets some number of bytes and does not have a specified iteration count, have the iteration count incremented until either the entire input block has been processed, or there is not enough data remaining in the block to satisfy the format string.

If, either as a result of user specification or hexdump modifying the iteration count as described above, an iteration count is greater than one, no trailing white-space characters are output during the last iteration.

It is an error to specify a byte count as well as multiple conversion characters or strings unless all but one of the conversion characters or strings is _a or _A.

If, as a result of the specification of the -n option or end-of-file being reached, input data only partially satisfies a format string, the input block is zero-padded sufficiently to display all available data (that is, any format units overlapping the end of data will display some number of the zero bytes).

Further output by such format strings is replaced by an equivalent number of spaces. An equivalent number of spaces is defined as the number of spaces output by an s conversion character with the same field width and precision as the original conversion character or conversion string but with any "+", " ", or "#" conversion flag characters removed, and referencing a NULL string.

If no format strings are specified, the default display is equivalent to specifying the -x option.

DIAGNOSTICS

The hexdump(1) utility exits 0 on success and >0 if an error occurred.