Skip to content
  • Categories
  • Recent
  • Tags
  • Popular
  • World
  • Users
  • Groups
Skins
  • Light
  • Cerulean
  • Cosmo
  • Flatly
  • Journal
  • Litera
  • Lumen
  • Lux
  • Materia
  • Minty
  • Morph
  • Pulse
  • Sandstone
  • Simplex
  • Sketchy
  • Spacelab
  • United
  • Yeti
  • Zephyr
  • Dark
  • Cyborg
  • Darkly
  • Quartz
  • Slate
  • Solar
  • Superhero
  • Vapor

  • Default (No Skin)
  • No Skin
Collapse
Code Project
  1. Home
  2. The Lounge
  3. using hexdump

using hexdump

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved The Lounge
question
3 Posts 3 Posters 0 Views 1 Watching
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as topic
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
  • G Offline
    G Offline
    Ganesh Ramaswamy
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    i hope this isnt programming question. i have heard people saying they use hexdump for debugging. But i couldn't understand what they get from it. I googled but couldnt get some good tutorials on hexdump. Can some please point me to some material about using this tool effectively fro debugging. thanks.

    D R 2 Replies Last reply
    0
    • G Ganesh Ramaswamy

      i hope this isnt programming question. i have heard people saying they use hexdump for debugging. But i couldn't understand what they get from it. I googled but couldnt get some good tutorials on hexdump. Can some please point me to some material about using this tool effectively fro debugging. thanks.

      D Offline
      D Offline
      Daniel Turini
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      Hexdump is a very important debugging tool: with it, you can have a dump, in hexadecimal, of binary file. There's a special technique for finding a bug with Hexdump: you need a fast machine for this. You won’t find anything on Google because it’s a black art, only mastered by a few. First, open a console window as big as your screen. Next, hexdump your program. When it finishes, simply press the up key and enter. Keep doing it. While doing it, do you see all those letters and numbers circulating fast on your screen? If you contemplate it for a while, at some point you’ll be able to clearly read everything that’s passing so fast through your screen: you’ll start merging your soul with your computer’s soul. Soon you’ll have an epiphany, and you and your computer become one. We say that you became The One(TM). In this state, bugs are so easy to find, so easy to fix… Now you understand why you didn’t find any tutorials: people who master hexdump debugging don’t write tutorials, because they merged their soul with the computer and cannot even write a few phrases of human language anymore. Put a girl in front of them and they’ll simply freeze. Some other people use hexdump to dump a file and examine its contents to help figuring why some program (which should work with this file) is not working, but these people will never get the real hexdump Yes, even I am blogging now!

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • G Ganesh Ramaswamy

        i hope this isnt programming question. i have heard people saying they use hexdump for debugging. But i couldn't understand what they get from it. I googled but couldnt get some good tutorials on hexdump. Can some please point me to some material about using this tool effectively fro debugging. thanks.

        R Offline
        R Offline
        Roger Wright
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        Using Hexdump (and other, similar tools) is an arcane art. I doubt that there are any guides available. Hex listings are handy for spotting patterns - repeating addresses, for instance - and for uncovering bits of text buried in executables. They're also useful for discovering the schema used for database files, and allow you to view the header information of various file types. "My kid was Inmate of the Month at Adobe Mountain Juvenile Corrections Center" - Bumper Sticker in Bullhead City

        1 Reply Last reply
        0
        Reply
        • Reply as topic
        Log in to reply
        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes


        • Login

        • Don't have an account? Register

        • Login or register to search.
        • First post
          Last post
        0
        • Categories
        • Recent
        • Tags
        • Popular
        • World
        • Users
        • Groups