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I would like to find a "hex" editor that can show the value of each byte in binary or decimal.

This would be useful in my freshman class where students have not yet learned the binary or hexadecimal number systems (in great detail) and are learning to write files in a binary format.

I have considered HxD, HexEdit, and Universal Viewer as recommended in this question, but none of these offers this feature (that I could find). HxD and HexEdit offer binary indexes, but not binary values of bytes.

Currently, the hex-editors like HxD and HexEdit are not much more useful than notepad to my students because they cannot read the hexadecimal values.

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  • Not quite what you want, and not free, but I am really impressed by 010 editor and am now Googling for alternatives.
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Jan 26, 2018 at 8:52
  • Have you considered forking a FOSS hex editor to add a binary display? It shouldn't be too much work. Or suggest such a feature to the authors?
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Jan 26, 2018 at 8:53
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    I think I will suggest my students write one from scratch :-)
    – Josiah Yoder
    Jan 26, 2018 at 14:07
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    If they public domain it, please come back & place a link here
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Jan 26, 2018 at 14:18
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    Re: Data Inspector - It's pretty obvious and always turned on by default. It's a new feature in version 2.0.0.0. Hard to miss, but if it's somehow not open already, it's in View > Toolbars.
    – John Y
    Aug 10, 2018 at 21:44

1 Answer 1

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The latest update of HxD was released in July 2018 and among its new features is the Data Inspector.

This is a display pane which is open by default and shows various interpretations of the data at the cursor, including binary. As you move the cursor, this display updates automatically. It's not exactly what you asked for, since you can only see the one byte at a time in this view, but it still could be useful.

HxD 2.0 screenshot

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