NAME

hexyl - a command-line hex viewer

SYNOPSIS

hexyl [OPTIONS] [FILE]

DESCRIPTION

hexyl is a simple hex viewer for the terminal. It uses a colored output to distinguish different categories of bytes (NULL bytes, printable ASCII characters, ASCII whitespace characters, other ASCII characters and non-ASCII).

POSITIONAL ARGUMENTS

FILE: The file to display. If no FILE argument is given, read from STDIN.

OPTIONS

-n, --length N: Only read N bytes from the input. The N argument can also include a unit with a decimal prefix (kB, MB, ..) or binary prefix (kiB, MiB, ..), or can be specified using a hex number.

Examples:
Read the first 64 bytes:: $ hexyl --length=64
Read the first 4 kibibytes:: $ hexyl --length=4KiB
Read the first 255 bytes (specified using a hex number):: $ hexyl --length=0xff

-c, --bytes N: An alias for -n/--length.
-l N: Yet another alias for -n/--length.
-s, --skip N: Skip the first N bytes of the input. The N argument can also include a unit (see --length for details). A negative value is valid and will seek from the end of the file.
--block-size SIZE: Sets the size of the block unit to SIZE (default is 512).

Examples:
Sets the block size to 1024 bytes:: $ hexyl --block-size=1024 --length=5block
Sets the block size to 4 kilobytes:: $ hexyl --block-size=4kB --length=2block

-v, --no-squeezing: Displays all input data. Otherwise any number of groups of output lines which would be identical to the preceding group of lines, are replaced with a line comprised of a single asterisk.
--color WHEN: When to use colors. The auto-mode only displays colors if the output goes to an interactive terminal.

Possible values:

•: always (default)
•: auto
•: never

--border STYLE: Whether to draw a border with Unicode characters, ASCII characters, or none at all.

Possible values:

•: unicode (default)
•: ascii
•: none

-o, --display-offset N: Add N bytes to the displayed file position. The N argument can also include a unit (see --length for details). A negative value is valid and calculates an offset relative to the end of the file.
-h, --help: Prints help information.
-V, --version: Prints version information.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

hexyl colors can be configured via environment variables. The variables used are as follows:

•: HEXYL_COLOR_ASCII_PRINTABLE: Any non-whitespace printable ASCII character
•: HEXYL_COLOR_ASCII_WHITESPACE: Whitespace such as space or newline (only visible in middle panel with byte values)
•: HEXYL_COLOR_ASCII_OTHER: Any other ASCII character (< 0x80) besides null
•: HEXYL_COLOR_NULL: The null byte (0x00)
•: HEXYL_COLOR_NONASCII: Any non-ASCII byte (> 0x7F)
•: HEXYL_COLOR_OFFSET: The lefthand file offset

The colors can be any of the 8 standard terminal colors: black, blue, cyan, green, magenta, red, yellow and white. The “bright” variants are also supported (e.g., bright blue). Additionally, you can use the RGB hex format, #abcdef. For example, HEXYL_COLOR_ASCII_PRINTABLE=blue HEXYL_COLOR_ASCII_WHITESPACE=“bright green” HEXYL_COLOR_ASCII_OTHER=“#ff7f99”.