xxd is a very good hexdump program that makes editing files on UNIX very easy. It also doesn't support text-tables. Which sucks.

eksd is a clone of a good hexdump program (even matching several arguments exactly)… except it supports text-tables.

To see a hexdump of a file, just run:

$ eksd $FILE > $HEXDUMP_FILE

If you want to turn a hexdump (from eksd or xxd) back to a file:

$ eksd -r $HEXDUMP_FILE > $FILE

And to make a hexdump with a custom text-table:

$ eksd -t $TABLE_FILE $FILE > $HEXDUMP_FILE

Text-tables are in a simple format— one hexcode per line, followed by its character. See ./text-tables/* for examples.

By default, eksd uses a built-in fancy text-table— it's basic ASCII, except it'll print nice pictographics for newline characters, etc. These require UTF, of course. If they don't work for you, use the "-a" arg to revert to simple, non-fancy ASCII. Note that specifying a text-table will override "-a", though.

Here's a part of Castlevania (EU) for the NES using its text-table:

$ eksd -t castle-table.txt castlevania.nes  | grep -A4 "18e80"
00018e80: 5454 5454 866e 6854 6460 8486 5454 5454  ....THE.CAST....
00018e90: 5454 5454 5466 8260 6488 7660 5454 5454  .....DRACULA....
00018ea0: 5464 6e82 7084 867c 7e6e 6882 5462 6868  .CHRISTOPHER.BEE
00018eb0: 5454 5454 5454 6668 6086 6e54 5454 5454  ......DEATH.....
00018ec0: 5454 5462 6876 7c54 7688 6c7c 8470 5454  ...BELO.LUGOSI..

And here's that same file in xxd (just because I feel like showing off):

$ xxd castlevania.nes | grep -A4 "18e80"
00018e80: 5454 5454 866e 6854 6460 8486 5454 5454  TTTT.nhTd`..TTTT
00018e90: 5454 5454 5466 8260 6488 7660 5454 5454  TTTTTf.`d.v`TTTT
00018ea0: 5464 6e82 7084 867c 7e6e 6882 5462 6868  Tdn.p..|~nh.Tbhh
00018eb0: 5454 5454 5454 6668 6086 6e54 5454 5454  TTTTTTfh`.nTTTTT
00018ec0: 5454 5462 6876 7c54 7688 6c7c 8470 5454  TTTbhv|Tv.l|.pTT

Making a binary requires a Lisp (I recommend SBCL) and Quicklisp (https://quicklisp.org).

Put this repository into your quicklisp/local-projects/, then run, in your lisp interpreter:

# (ql:quickload '(eksd eksd-unix))
# (save-lisp-and-die "eksd" :toplevel #'eksd-unix:invoke :executable t)

And bam, you've made a binary. Cool.

• License is the GNU GPLv3 (COPYING.txt)
• Author is Jaidyn Ann [email protected]
• Sauce is at https://hak.xwx.moe/jadedctrl/eksd