Hex Dump Viewer tool

Hex Dump Viewer tool

 

Use the Hex Dump Viewer tool to view the binary contents of a file in hexadecimal and ASCII format.   This allows you to inspect the binary contents of any file.

 

hmtoggle_arrow1How to open the Hex Dump Viewer tool

 

You can open this tool from either the Start Page or the Compare Folders window.  

 

1.Open the tool from the Start Page

 

Press the Hex dump button while in Tools mode. The tool will appear with no file selected and no hex dump displayed.

 

startpage_hexdumpbtn

 

2.Open the tool from the Compare Folders window

 

Select a file from a Comparison Result Pane then choose "View hex dump of file" from either the File menu, the Tools toolbar button drop-down, or the right-click context menu.  The  tool will appear with the selected file's hex dump displayed.

 

When the tool opens up, it may show the hex dump of a file or it may be empty.  This depends on how you arrived here.  (See the discussion above.)  If no file has been selected, you'll need to do so.

 

hmtoggle_arrow1How to select a file

 
To select a file, click on the three dots ellipsis to the upper right of the hex dump output window.  

 
viewhexdump_selectfile

 

This will open up a Load File window you can select a file from.

 

selectfilesdialog

 

 

Select the file whose hex dump you want to see and press OK on the Load File window.  The tool then displays the hex dump of the selected file.

 

hmtoggle_arrow1Understanding the hex dump

 
The dump has the segment offset on the left, hexadecimal (hex) values in the center, and ASCII interpretation on the right. Characters outside of ASCII 32 - 126 are not readily displayable. The tool will use a dot character to represent those.
 
Definitions:

 

Here are some working definitions for the terms discussed:

 

What is a Dump?

A dump is a view of the contents in an area of computer memory.

 

What is a Segment Offset?

Segment: A variable-sized portion of data.
Offset: Refers to a value added to a base address to produce a second address

 

What is Hexadecimal?

Refers to the base-16 number system, which comprises 16 unique symbols: the numbers 0 to 9 and the letters A to F.

 

What is ASCII?

Acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange.  Pronounced ask-ee, ASCII is a code for representing English characters as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127.

 

 

Limitations:

 

Our hex dump display is subject to technical constraints that affect the amount of file data it can showcase. The control we use has a maximum capacity of 2,147,483,647 rows, with each row representing 16 bytes of file data.

Therefore, the theoretical upper limit for file size, considering the maximum number of rows and bytes per row, is 34.36 GB (Maximum rows x Bytes of data per row).

 

It's important to note that in practical usage, the application may run out of memory before reaching this theoretical limit.

Should your system lack sufficient memory to view the hex dump of a large file, you might encounter one of the following errors:

 

 

hexdumpviewer_notenoughmemoryerror
 
hexdumpviewer_notenoughmemoryerror2