Is there a good way to display the contents of a file as binary?
I am creating a program that needs to save and load a 2D arrays from a files.
When loading a saved file the result appears different.
I need to be able to view the contents of the saved file in plain binary to tell if my problem in in my save or load function.
Is there a program like octal dump but is binary dump?
Thanks.
On linux/unix (or Windows + cygwin) there is the "od" utility which dumps files in many formats.
E.g. hexadecimal:
od -t x1 file...
I hope it may help you.
Regards
Just for fun, using Ruby from the command line:
cat file | ruby -e "puts STDIN.read.unpack('B*')[0].scan(/[01]{8}/).join(' ')"
Having the raw binary dump is too overwhelming for most people. Consider using od -x, or if you need a more specific format then examine the various options for -t.
Related
When writing to a binary file, when should I use .bin vs .dat? If I'm just trying to store information not meant to be read by humans, like item description/serial number pair, does it matter which one I pick if I'm just trying to make it unreadable from a text editor?
Let me give you some brief details about these files :
.BIN File : The BIN file type is primarily associated with 'Binary File'. Binary files are used for a wide variety of content and can be associated with a great many different programs. In general, a .BIN file will look like garbage when viewed in a file editor.
.DAT File : The DAT file type is primarily associated with 'Data'. Can be just about anything: text, graphic, or general binary data. Data file in special format or ASCII.
Reference:
Abhijit Banerjee answered that question on quora
.dat is a more frequently used suffix for binary data. It doesn't matter what extension you pick, as long as you are on Unix or Linux based systems.
Sufixes can mean whatever you want them to mean... Those rules are more like guidelines than actual rules...
However, BIN seems like a short to binary, so a BIN file will likely hold data in binary form. DAT seems like a short to data, so a DAT file will contain information in whatever format the developer of the program that reads that file seems fit (ASCII, Binary, a mix of them, something else entirely)
On a UNIX system, there is no difference. The extensions are interchangeable.
If you do not put any extension, it makes it kinda hard for someone not knowing what the file's extension should be, to open the file. Additionally, with Unix or Linux, if you place a dot (period) before the file name, the file hides itself.
I am using trying to get specific information from a group of MP3 files, currently I am in the main cygwin64 that holds MP3 files and a .C file which simply contains
FILE * fp;
It contains that single line of code because when that line of code is in place and I type and run "thing.c" in the cygwin command line it outputs what seems the be the information of the contents of the folder. For example it outputs,
home: sticky, directory
lib: directory
sbin: directory
setup-x86_64.exe: PE32+ executable (GUI) x86-64 (stripped to external PDB), for MS Windows
song.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
song1.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
thing.c: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
thing.txt: empty
What I want to do is be able to pull that output into a string that I can then use in my C file and alter and then re print out the new altered information. However I'm not sure where the output really is coming from or how I might be able to get it or save the output as a .txt file or back into a C file.
Any advice is appreciated Thanks!
This file is not really a C file at all. Because you're in Cygwin, you're likely operating on a case-insensitive filesystem (NTFS). As such, Cygwin's file command is running when you run the .c file. The way you've attempted to declare a variable (apparently) just so happens to be doing a 'file * fp' command. I'm sure you're getting fp: Cannot open "fp" or something similar after the rest of your output.
This is not anything C-related at all but is just being interpreted as a script by your shell.
It sounds like you have a lot to learn if you want to do this in C. More likely, you can probably write a shell script to accomplish what you want. While I've never used it, mp3info (https://github.com/jaalto/cygwin-package--mp3info) exists for pulling tag information from MP3 files. You could possibly get the exact information you want from that, or pipe the output into sed, awk, or a number of other tools.
I am trying to investigate the working of RC file and hence stored the file in hadoop cluster using row group size as 3 bytes to ensure my data is stored in 2-3 rowgroups.
After loading, inorder to check how the contents are organized in my file, I downloaded the file to be in RC file format and used xxd /Path/To/Downloaded/File to open it. The content which was in hexadecimal format is displayed but I hope there was some other format too in the same file due to which we are not able to check content.
The file in text and binary format opened using xxd is as follows;
Could someone help me understanding the contents of file in RC format.
Thanks,
Sree
There is hive utility rcfilecat to read RC file. Something like:
ggk#hadoop4:~/Downloads$ hive --rcfilecat 000000_0
References:
Documentation
Java doc
I wanted to see the file content as is. rcfilecat deserializes the data and rearranges in record format. I used the file to see contents.
sudo xxd /path/to/downloaded/file
Thanks,
Sree
I have a file that holds manufacturing orders for a machine.
I would like to read the content of this file and edit it, but when I open it in a text editor i.e. Notepad++, I get a bunch of wierd charecters:
xÚ¥—_HSQÀo«a)’êaAXŽâê×pD8R‰¬©s“i+ƒ´#¡$
-þl-ó/ÓíºIúPôàƒHˆP–%a&RÎÈn÷ü¹·;Ú;ç<ìòÝÃý}¿ó}‡{϶«rWg>˜›ãR‡)Çn0³Ûf³yÎW[5–šw½ÇRW{ñ’rO6¹ŽŸp¦ÙœcÏ.9yÀnýg
)Ë—e90ejÕø£rC. f¦}3ËŒ˜hü”å1g[…ø±ú ÜJøz®‹˜YfÈ,4`ŽKÉ—ù“ÔË¿d„þlG3#=˜Ž´+hF¬¦£€«šm¿áØ
ïÖµv‡ËpíÍ~™‡Aù
šëÈÚ]ÿç™DŒÉFØ ïƒæsij ¦y=-74Æ/t=ÕŠr\˜š»Âä‰Ý¨žã΢
dz·à‡'fœ½yâ½4qåPjácòÄŒeÊhñ“ý™ÙÎÕ÷5ôlñ=˜Õ{ú;ø=Û;4OêYä>Ìpxbæâ'è"oëB×1gQ9“'¹]Ô³’Ô³ø!ÌózÞyŸõžÓIŽù*&OÌXPÕ"ŽWžpíOÌè‚Þ3Òr0{Ž†R=_?…/¼žÞ0,ê=/?£ûÓËîy“2Z<ij³[ËÁì™÷–ôžÎ’Ããa÷<Maêéí…¼ž}©žYýZ-˜=”á¤}π＞3°¢÷œ$ïè‰3ìž«ƒÄs¿—xnŒÀ*¯gi$ÕómDËÁìùIeоû‡À¬?3°x¾"~ª§c˜öÝÇî颌°›x¾Fßb>Ï}QXÓ{öFi-êÙßóR”œe^Ñ÷ü‘¿g[Lë ŽwJZϘë¹3”³L©gH‚,^Ïe 2ôžWGøëÙ2‚Î
øœL¾ÅqÈäõ,ýç\œË3¾þeྗ&`Ϻ<KÒf“’»ðù]í‰ãžU^wèþåÔÖy”H}ò•6ø6
It looks like the file is encoded.
Any idea how to find the encoding and make the file readable and editable?
It's binary and probably encoded so without knowledge of data structure you can't do much - just reverse engineering based on trying and checking what changed, operating with hex editor.
It isn't impossible, tho. If you can change the data the way you know (eg. change number of orders from 1 to 2) and export to file, you can compare binary values and find which byte holds that number. Of course if it is encrypted and you don't know the key... It's easier to find another way.
For further read, check this out - https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Reverse_Engineering/File_Formats
If you've got access to a Linux box why not use
hexdump -C <filename>
You will be able to get a much better insight into how the file is structured, than by using a text editor.
There are also many "hexdump" equivalent commands on Windows
I am working on HP-UX project, there are a old document. Can open it with vim, but there are some special character among text. For example:
.P
"xxxxx"
.AL 1 10
.LI "xxx"
.H 3 "xxxx"
It looks like html but not be html. Is it possible convert it to modern document?
Looks like troff. Install GNU troff (Groff) and try:
groff -Thtml -pet -mm input.mm > output.html
I guess more details are needed - some ideas you may try:
First, issue a file command for the file. It will probably tell you what type of file is.
jim#debian:~$ file foo.bar
foo.bar: ASCII text
Second, search for similar files and see if there's a program to open them in the machine - maybe, they are binary files for some program out there, and you just don't know which one.
Last, but not least, I believe you are right - looks like HTML code to me, so maybe this is used by an application as a kind-of intermediate language, that is parsed later to transform it to real HTML.
I hope this helps!