Package: bsdmainutils
Version: 6.1.10
Severity: normal
The 'man hexdump' description of the '-e' option and its format strings
is rather obscure; though there are some examples for the '-f' option,
there's none for '-e'. No patch today -- some lively quotes, followed
by some useful '-e' examples. Readers that don't like complaints
should please skip ahead to the examples.
Disgruntled users:
Manual on How to Use the Hexdump Unix Utility
Every time I go to use hexdump I find myself stumbling over
its bizarre argument format and ineffectual manual.
Because I look at binary files often I decided to work up
this page more for myself than anyone else....
http://256.com/gray/docs/misc/hexdump_manual_how_to.html
Need help with hexdump -e
Date: 25 Oct 2004 10:45:08 -0700
Can someone tell me where I can find *good* documentation for the
hexdump command? I've been trying for the past half hour to
understand the -e format string....
http://www.dbforums.com/archive/index.php/t-1049742.html
Incomprehensive Hexdump Man Page
THE HEXDUMP MAN page, I find, is not the best written example of an
applications manual. {...} WTF!? Near having a fury induced head
explosion I resolved to Google. Seems that I'm not the only one having a
hard time decoding the '-e' description {...} Eventually I found some
indications that, to get the desired formatting, I should utilize some
of the non-fprintf formatting options provided by hexdump. More man page
decoding? No fucking way! Enough of this shit! Having wasted precious
work time, I abandoned hexdump and put together a little Lua script that
would do the hex dumping and format the output to fit my requirements. {...}
http://monzool.net/blog/2008/02/18/incomprehensive-hexdump-man-page/
Examples (with thanks to the folks who wrote the above URLs):
# hex bytes
% echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X "' ; echo
68 65 6C 6C 6F 0A
# same, with ASCII section
% echo hello | hexdump -e '8/1 "%02X ""\t"" "' -e '8/1 "%c""\n"'
68 65 6C 6C 6F 0A hello
# hex with preceding 'x'
% echo hello | hexdump -v -e '"x" 1/1 "%02X" " "' ; echo
x68 x65 x6C x6C x6F x0A
# one hex byte per line
% echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X\n"'
68
65
6C
6C
6F
0A
# a table of byte#, hex, decimal, octal, ASCII
% echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%_ad# "' \
-e '/1 "%02X hex"' \
-e '/1 " = %03i dec"' \
-e '/1 " = %03o oct"' \
-e '/1 " = _%c\_\n"'
0# 68 hex = 104 dec = 150 oct = _h_
1# 65 hex = 101 dec = 145 oct = _e_
2# 6C hex = 108 dec = 154 oct = _l_
3# 6C hex = 108 dec = 154 oct = _l_
4# 6F hex = 111 dec = 157 oct = _o_
5# 0A hex = 010 dec = 012 oct = _
_
# byte# & ASCII with control chars
% echo hello | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%_ad# "' -e '/1 " _%_u\_\n"'
0# _h_
1# _e_
2# _l_
3# _l_
4# _o_
5# _lf_
Hope this helps...
-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) (ignored: LC_ALL set to C)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages bsdmainutils depends on:
ii bsdutils 1:2.13.1.1-1 Basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite
ii debianutils 2.30 Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii libc6 2.7-12 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libncurses5 5.6+20080621-2 shared libraries for terminal hand
bsdmainutils recommends no packages.
-- debconf information excluded
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