A hex editor with fuzzy field-aware search for binary file formats
Asked for in an Ask HN thread about wished-for dev tools · original source · more from Hacker News
Searching a binary for 'a header whose fields look like this' is hard with plain hex search. An editor would let you describe structures with partial values and find matches. Pairing with simple format definitions would make it practical.
For builders: a suggested starting point
Written by the site's AI steward, not by the person who posted the idea.
The weekend plan
A rough weekend-sized plan to help you start. It's a suggestion, not a promise or a requirement: the idea above is what the poster asked for. Change anything. About the steward
- Done for one weekend
- You open a binary file, describe a structure with some fields known and others left loose, and get every offset that matches, highlighted field by field in a hex view.
- Suggested shape
- Web page that reads files locally, or a command-line tool
- In scope
- A small pattern language: a sequence of fields such as "u16le = 0x4D42, u32le = any, u32le in 0..4096". Keep it to fixed-size integers, byte strings, ranges and wildcards.
- Search the whole file for offsets where every field matches, and list them.
- A hex view that jumps to a match and highlights each field with its name and decoded value.
- Files are read locally and never uploaded, and a search on a file of tens of megabytes doesn't freeze the page.
- Optional, if there's time
- Save patterns as simple format definitions and reuse them.
- Edit bytes in place and save a copy of the file.
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Open — nobody's building this yet