Talk:Comparison of hex editors

Grid
I think a very interesting and important feature that should be listed in the grid is whether each hex editor allows arbitrary insertions and deletions, or is limited to overwriting existing data. Unfortunately, I don't know how to gather this information about the listed editors.

-ridiculous_fish

Unlimited file size
Obviously no program can support unlimited file sizes, only virtually unlimited sizes; it's a design decision. That's why it makes sense to specify the current maximum file size (usually dependent on the file system or the operating system). If somebody wants to remove "unlimited" then this should be done for all programs or none of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.179.162.136 (talk) 02:24, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * In reality "unlimited" often only means 2^32-1 or even 2^31-1 which is of course less than 2^63.
 * This means: A program with "unlimited" file size often does not support large file sizes supported by programs that "officially" have limited file sizes (of more than 2^60 bytes).
 * This fact may confuse the reader of this article. Therefore I also think the article should be modified.
 * --Mr1278 (talk) 12:54, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * In the list here, unlimited does mean limited only by 64 bit pointers, and not by 32 bit pointers. Otherwise it says limited by RAM.
 * I think "unlimited" should mean that the application does not limit the file size, the file size is limited only by the operating system. In practice, it means that the file size can be up to 2^64 bytes. (It is unlikely there be files larger than that in our lifetime.) -- PauliKL (talk) 12:21, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
 * If the lessons from the 32-bit to 64-bit transitions have been learned the applications should just work fine for an OS with more than 64 bits after re-compiling for this target. "Unlimited" seems more appropriate than a system-dependent limit. Jojo (talk) 10:56, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Thinking more about how the position in a scroll bar (GUI) would be translated to a size_t file position, there is a lot that can go wrong and applications that claim to support 8 EiB may actually be restricted to something like 8/(height_of_scroll_bar_in_pixels) EiB, i.e. typically between 3 and 10 PiB. Also, a limit of 8 EiB suggests that signed int64 was used without much though as 2^64 bytes = 16 EiB is the expected limit. Btrfs supports files close to 16 EiB. (File data and filesystem meta data must both fit within 16 EiB.) Jojo (talk) 10:56, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Intel Hex (or Motorola S-Record) capability
Another feature that should be listed is whether the editor allows to read/write Intel HEX files. The Intel Hex or Motorola S-Record formats are examples of file formats which include address information. This allows to read/write non-contiguous areas (a must for embedded programming).


 * Intel / Motorola / Tektronix hex formats are all plain ASCII files, so any text editor can handle them. -- PauliKL (talk) 11:36, 4 August 2012 (UTC)


 * No, these files need to be imported to be converted to binary files and there are several options for creating/exporting them. A text editor is not suited for editing them. (Or do you want to manually compute the checksums for each line and properly set the address information?


 * (Sorry for the late answer, I entered to this page accidentally) OK, now I know what you mean. You mean that when editing a hex file, the checksum would be calculated automatically. I don't know if there is a hex editor that can do that, and can not imagine a use case for that. I have been a professional programmer for nearly 40 years, and I have newer found a reason to do that. When I do a change in a program. I edit the source code and then compile it. There is no point to edit the hex file. -- PauliKL (talk) 12:34, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

What do the headers mean?
"Maximum file size", "Bit editing", "Disassembler", and "Character encodings" are all obvious in meaning. But I'm confused about the others.

"Load file in memory" -- Does this mean it can load a file into memory, or load a file that is resident in memory? "Disk editing" -- Does this mean the ability to edit system structure, or does it just have the "save to disk" operation..? "Text editor" -- Emacs is a text editor, so are echo/cat. Is this refering to auto-wrapping lines, the ability to stick "all your base are belong to us" into a file (inserting characters?) or simply the ability to type in ASCII codes? "Structure view" -- Structure of what, exactly? "Choose font" -- This doesn't seem immediately useful to me. This is an informational wiki page, used for finding good hex editors. Typically, I'd assume that most anyone looking for a good hex editor is not going to care too much how pretty it is... Sketch-The-Fox 17:25, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The "Choose Font" column offers no benefit--Those looking for a hex editor are looking for features, not pretty graphics. Also, none of the DOS/Console hex editors could have fonts anyway. Sketch-The-Fox 05:09, 8 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure my comments are any help, but here they are. ;^)
 * I would guess that "load file in memory" means that the program loads the entire file into memory, which means it can't handle really large files very easy.
 * I would guess that "disk editing" means that the user can edit files either directly on the disk, or can load portions of the file into memory and then rewrite the same segment.
 * I would guess that "text editor" means you can type actual text using the keyboard (i.e. not have to encode all additions)
 * I agree that "view structure" is ambiguous. Perhaps some programs attempt to determine the way the data is organized and/or the user can specify an organization and have the data displayed in those formats (e.g. a float followed by an int followed by ...)
 * The advantage of "choose font" would be if the data were encoded in a different language (e.g. a Hebrew font)
 * You might consider checking the links for entries that have values for the fields in question. That might shed some light on whatever the original author was thinking.  If I had more time, I would offer to help. :-( wrp103 (Bill Pringle) 14:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think "Disk editing" should mean that you can directly edit disk sectors, instead of editing files. You can then edit e.g. boot sector, file allocation table, didrectories etc. for example to repair broken disk structure. I suggest this column to be renamed to Disk sector editing. (BTW, NT based Windows do not allow disk sector editing as far as I know.)


 * "File structure view" heading is still ambiguous, no explanation has been given. The link points to "File format" page, which is not very useful. PauliKL (talk) 10:41, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * What does "Search unicode" mean? Why would you need some special function to search for unicode? In hex editor, the normal way is to search for the hex value of specific unicode character. PauliKL (talk) 17:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right about the disk editing column; however, Tiny Hexer supports disk editing ONLY for NT-based systems. (You do have to be administrator though.) "File structure view" refers to the ability to display a file or a range of bytes as a C structure or something of the sort. --Aurochs (Talk | Block)

Hex Edit listing is inaccurate
I only just discovered this page and I don't know how to edit it, or if I should being the creator of Hex Edit.

The entries for "Hex Edit" and "Hex Edit Free" are pretty obviously mine but I think there should be some way to distinguish programs (perhaps a web page address column) since there are/have been several editors called "Hex Edit". Actually I usually write the name of mine without a space as "HexEdit".

There are several inaccuracies in my listing:

- it does do disk editing (new in 3.1)

- it has always allowed individual bit editing (in Byte page of modeless Properties dialog by double-clicking individual bits in the binary view)

- I am not exactly sure what is meant by text editing but you can edit characters in the character area (in ASCII, EBCDIC etc)

- it has always provided an INS mode allowing inserting and deleting of bytes (in 3.0 this uses a new algorithm that avoids the need for temporary files)

- structure viewer - we invented the advanced template system that has been copied by other editors

- there is no disassembler (that is CORRECT)

Also it does provide Intel-hex and Motorola-S reading and writing, including discontiguous records as an option.

All of these features are also provided in the FREE version as well, except for the disk editor.

Hexit homepage disappeared
Because HexIt's homepage disappeared, I provide link to Wayback snapshot of its homepage here: Direct Wayback download here:  Wayback download requires repairing ZIP archive, but hopefully its damage doesn't affect archived files - they are identical with themselves downloaded before disappearing of Hexit's homepage. As you see, HexIt is still 1.57 from 2002 onwards. Wikinger 14:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Large file viewing
Almost all modern text editors read the whole file into memory in order to work with it. This makes even just browsing/viewing large files awkward and slow -- sometimes impossible, if they do not fit into memory. So, a person wanting to view a large text file needs to use a hex editor, because some of them are able to browse through large files directly, without having to load the whole file into memory first. Some hex editors are probably better than others at displaying text nicely. See "Maximum file size" and "Partial file loading" columns in Comparison of hex editors. Are there any particularly good guides to "Viewing large text files"? -69.87.200.124 12:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Linkfarm
The external links to product sites in the first column (unlabeled) should be removed per WP:EL, WP:SPAM, and WP:NOT --Ronz 21:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Removed. --Ronz (talk) 19:23, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

SORT BUTTON
PLEASE ADD SORT BOTTON ON EVERY COLUMM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.235.192 (talk) 09:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Inaccuracy about i.Hex
The source-code of i.Hex is available for downloading on the website however the license is not specified so I think it's license shouldn't be left as proprietary.

Diaa Sami —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 13:46, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

HHD Software Free Hex Editor Neo
I removed the listings for HDD's so called free editor as it's actually 14 day trialware that says right in the licensing agreement, "This is not free software.". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.58.252.5 (talk) 14:45, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Mistake by 216.58.252.5
Misunderstanding of product EULA by user IP 216.58.252.5. The Product is available in several different editions, one of which is Free. See the edition comparison table here: Hex Editor Neo Edition Comparison Table:

Here is the fragment from the product EULA: END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

...

Free version of the software is distributed under the terms in "Free Version" section (see below).

...

FREE VERSION

The HHD Software Company through this License Agreement grants to you non-exclusive and non-transferable rights thereunder in respect of using a copy of the computer program for a service life thereof, i.e. for a time period throughout which HHD Software shall maintain and make available an updated version thereof. This particular software version is distributed free of charge, therefore, the applicable license is only granted for home use thereof. In case of this free version, the program is not subject to any guarantees, and the user has no right to any technical support whatsoever.

... --HHD Software (talk) 13:14, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Spam
First, to be absolutely clear, I am the creator of HexEdit (free and shareware versions). I have made small changes to this ("Comparison of hex editors") page but these were only small corrections of fact to the entries for Hex Edit.

I am disappointed that some vendors are using this page for self-promotion -- noteably, the commercial vendors HHD and 010. Also some of the creators of free products (such as HxD) are guilty of the same but I am inclined to give freeware a bit more leeway.

For example, the 4 links in the references section go against the Wikipedia guidelines (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:REF). They are a link grab and should be removed.

010 have a history of this. I discovered an article at CodeProject that was self-promotion/link grab disguised as a normal article. In fact when 010 first came out it plagiarised many ideas that appeared in my free hex editor. They continue to advertise their "unique binary templates" which are not unique since I invented a similar facility for HexEdit years before theirs.

I should say that this page is very useful and a great idea (like Wikipedia generally), and I would like to keep it that way. 124.171.23.33 (talk) 21:24, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I am disappointed that some vendors are using this page for self-promotion -- noteably, the commercial vendors HHD and 010. Also some of the creators of free products (such as HxD) are guilty of the same but I am inclined to give freeware a bit more leeway.

For example, the 4 links in the references section go against the Wikipedia guidelines (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:REF). They are a link grab and should be removed.
 * As the creator of HxD I would just like to comment on why this is not spam (from my side). The reference link was added because previously someone removed the "unlimited (8 EiB)" from the "Maximum file size" column, with the argument that 8EiB is a limit. Of course on a computer unlimited can only mean virtually unlimited. It seems it's not obvious in general, so this was replaced with "unlimited" and a reference to the product features.

92.202.24.221 (talk) 00:00, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I'm the one who added 010 and (quite a few others in the disk editor article) initially... But I didn't make 010.  I agree that it should not be spammed at the bottom with the references or whatever they're doing.  Are those 'structure' or 'template' features like the disectors in Ethereal/Wireshark?  That is a nice feature for figuring out a file format if true.  Especially if they can be defined from within the editing window!71.196.246.113 (talk) 04:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Used By
I have never seen a "Used By" column on another Wikipedia listing. I don't think it's really appropriate here on the grounds that it isn't verifiable by any means. I'm not sure if this would be considered self-publishing or not. Additionally, it's not in any way statistically conclusive. It's basically a third party website saying "this is how many users we have who say they use this software". The site itself claims to only have 8 Million members, which is not even a decent sampling of world wide users to begin to provide a statistical base. I leave it to the other better editors to make a determination upon this, or tell me I'm flat out wrong and this is something that needs to be here, and if so, it must need to be added to the many additional software pages to show this information. -- KookyMan (talk) 19:55, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

GNU Midnight Commander
it has a hex editor.

/not gonna add it myself :/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.17.167.191 (talk) 12:46, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Hex viewing - read only
What hex viewers are available, with no danger of changing the file in any way? Which hex editors can be readily invoked in read-only viewing mode? -96.233.20.116 (talk) 12:54, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

A column for this would be nice. In the meantime, you can protect your data with an appropriately configured loop device, device mapper or snapshot device if the editor supports working with block devices. If your file is on a filesystem supporting copy-on-write such as btrfs, you can make a copy with --reflink=always without using additional disk space (bar some meta data) and safely work on the copy. Jojo (talk) 09:54, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Character encodings Macintosh and Unix
In "Character encodings" column, there is "Macintosh" listed for several editors, and in some cases even even "Unix". Do such character encodings actually exist? I doubt that. --PauliKL (talk) 11:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC) Windows has various codepage categories. One is ANSI, one MAC, and one EBCDIC. All of these are families of codepages, from which you can select a default one in the system settings. So when you select ANSI you will get the default ANSI codepage that was set in your OS. Similar for MAC and EBCDIC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.219.148.137 (talk) 10:06, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

hard drive/disk editing?
the table should include wheather or not the program can hex edit hard drives. 50.47.102.4 (talk) 11:36, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Binary Viewer Pro
This program is now called "Binary Viewer" and it is freeware. Source: http://www.proxoft.com/BinaryViewer.aspx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.174.63.68 (talk) 07:43, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Limit to only notable entries
This seems to have been implemented. At least the article says "The following is a comparison of notable hex editors". For discussion of notability, see the section "Notability". Jojo (talk) 11:16, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

As it doesn't appear this article is being maintained well, how about we simplify the job by reducing the inclusion criteria to notable entries only as suggested by Common selection criteria? --Ronz (talk) 16:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

--

Some data are wrong. For example HxD is able to search and replace.

--

radare2 has (tons of) GUIs
radare2 has some GUIs developed by the community. They are not official, but some of them are actively maintained and for some users improve their radare2 experience. My proposal is to set the GUIs field to something in the lines of "Not official", since a straight Yes would be misleading.

Dd0a (talk) 22:27, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Notepad++???
What was the point of including Notepad++ there? Apparently some plugins support hex viewing/editing, but in this case specific plugin should be mentioned. Now it just looks silly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.106.171.134 (talk) 08:15, 6 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Agree and removed. The row did indeed refer to a non-notable 3rd-party plugin (see article history for more information). GermanJoe (talk) 13:11, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Missing editors

 * Ghex
 * Khex
 * Okteta
 * Hexer

Suspicious software : CheatEngine
CheatEngine, as linked from this page, is providing a software which is suspect :

The download page on the official website ( http://cheatengine.org/downloads.php ) provides a dynamically generated link to bundlestowerfiles.com/xxxxxxx which downloads the following file : https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/0cbfd9ca9cb2117129a3b998b25b85647da26edabd126f037bf14534f213c26b/detection Detection 11/67, community score -29

Suggestion : remove all CheatEngine references

PS: oh nevermind, it has been reported already on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cheat_Engine#Trojan-infused 8 years ago Wikipedia linking to malware, nobody cares and I just wasted my time... — Preceding unsigned comment added by User2674 (talk • contribs) 18:59, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Notability
Emacs and UltraEdit are notable as *text editors*. But are they really notable or practical as hex editors? I don't think they really fit in this list, if you consider this criterion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.219.148.137 (talk) 10:18, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

My favourite Linux distribution has 4 different hex editors in its default repository, none of which are in the table:
 * dhex by Thomas Dettbarn, http://dettus.net/dhex/
 * hexedit by Pixel (Pascal Rigaux), https://github.com/pixel/hexedit/ with 51 stars, 24 forks
 * qhexedit2 by Winfried Simon, https://github.com/Simsys/qhexedit2 with 254 stars, 108 forks
 * wxhexeditor by Erdem U. Altinyurt, http://www.wxhexeditor.org and https://github.com/EUA/wxHexEditor with 420 stars, 92 forks

How is notability measured? The current selection seems to focus on proprietary and closed source software. Jojo (talk) 11:45, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

"Tex editor" column usefulness
The question has been raised earlier: what exactly is "text editor" supposed to mean?

Every hex editor also has the capability to edit text, it's a basic feature. So, is it supposed to mean if the program is a text editor, by default or mainly? If that is the case, I don't see how that is relevant to a *hex* editor, or how this is a positive feature. A text editor is usually not suited as a full blown hex editor, so a "Yes" should be either red or neutral, but not green.

Probably this column should be removed, or replaced with something more meaningful.

For example: "show text files with line wrapping, and still be able to load and browse large files fast." It is hard to come up with a short term for this, my suggestion: "Large text file editing" This would imply that line wrapping has to be supported, to edit text files naturally, but "Large text file editing (with line wrapping)" seems exceedingly long. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.219.148.137 (talk) 10:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Text editors with hex editing functionality?
A question for clarification, that has already been raised in some way in previous messages: should editors that are primarily described as text editors but have some additional hex editing mode as secondary feature or as external plugin (such as GNU Emacs or Vim) be included in this list or not? It seems a bit misleading to add such applications with only rudimentary hex functionality in the same list with fully-fledged hex editors. Whether such applications are added or not, it would be useful to clarify the inclusion criteria in this regard a bit more. GermanJoe (talk) 16:45, 15 October 2019 (UTC) tbh i interested source about maximum files sizes too, because this is not a common function. In similar article about text editors, each which has marked yes not have citation. 2A02:A311:233E:B200:DE8B:28FF:FE2E:E0EB (talk) 18:19, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, i added vim because emacs was :P 2A02:A311:233E:B200:DE8B:28FF:FE2E:E0EB (talk) 18:11, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Text editors that don't focus on hex editing, should not be mentioned
For the same reason that only notable hex editors are included.

Emacs, vim, and UltraEdit have the most minimal support possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.219.179.109 (talk) 15:51, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Vim features were mostly inaccurate
Whoever filled in the features for Vim seems to not know what they are supposed to do. What is meant is serious support for those features, not somehow patching it in awkwardly with external tools in a very limited way. Please read the commit history for details.

Binary Ninja
I feel a bit conflicted about inclusion of Binary Ninja in the comparison table. It is technically not a hex editor, nor is it advertised as one. A hex editor is expected to work on arbitrary data files regardless of their content. However, if you open an audio file with Binary Ninja, it will attempt to disassemble it as an executable, which will typically not produce a meaningful result, since an audio file is not an executable. That said, Binary Ninja might be exactly what some people are looking for since some hex editors do include tools used for reverse engineering application executables. Cyberixae (talk) 16:17, 5 October 2022 (UTC)