A neat but useless thing you can do in Unix

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If you want to get the binary code for a file, say an image or an application, you can type "hexdump -C " and then the filename in the terminal. This will display the machine code in hex. Other options include -o for displaying in octal and -d for displaying in decimal.

Not really useless ^ ^

Do you know what it's used for? To me it just looks sort of like the goto statement, included because it gives you more power, but doesn't have much practical value.

One day, you may have to deal with binary files in a remote server through ssh. Hex is one of the few fews to really get to see what's going on with them.

If this happens to you, remember me. I once had to use it, that's all I am saying.

The xxd utility is similar.

It's not useless; it's extremely useful for reading data containing non-ASCII content, such as HL7 messages.

If you don't use it. It's useless. If you know what it is and know how to use it. It can be a "I need this to live" utility

It sounds interesting.

O COOL I just tried it I can see
inside any regular file, that kicks butt.

btw, if you want to see the (usually-hidden) structure of a UNIX directory, try "cat /path/ | xxd". (This does NOT work on Linux, definitely works on AIX, not sure about others.)

dd is OK, as is od.

Okay, I'm confused here. How do you "read" hexadecimal binary code?

hex would actually be data. It's just a lot easier to follow than binary...

When you're doing IP arithmetic (especially for figuring out subnet masks), it could be handy.

What he said! *nods*

Hexadecimal and binary are two different systems.

Hex isnt that hard to read, in fact, its more efficient than decimal.

well, they're just different bases; f is easier to keep track of than 1111...
numbers is numbers...