Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

hexdump

Synopsis

    hexdump [options]file

GNU/Linux and Mac OS X only. Display specified file or input in hexadecimal, octal, decimal, or ASCII format. Option flags specify the display format.

Options

-b

Use a one-byte octal display, meaning the input offset is in hexadecimal and followed by sixteen three-column octal data bytes, filled in with zeroes and separated by spaces.

-c

Use a one-byte character display, meaning the input offset is in hexadecimal and followed by sixteen three-column entries, filled in with zeroes and separated with spaces.

-C

Canonical mode. Display hexadecimal offset, two sets of eight columns of hexadecimal bytes, then a | followed by the ASCII representation of those same bytes.

-d

Use a two-byte decimal display. The input offset is again in hexadecimal, but the display has only eight entries per line, of five columns each, containing two bytes of unsigned decimal format.

-e format_string

Choose a format string to be used to transform the output data. Format strings consist of:

Iteration count

The iteration count is optional. It determines the number of times to use the transformation string. The number should be followed by a slash character (/) to distinguish it from the byte count.

Byte count

The number of bytes to be interpreted by the conversion string. It should be preceded by a slash character to distinguish it from the iteration count.

Format characters

The actual format characters should be surrounded by quotation marks and are interpreted as ...