
Cross-platform Python 2/3 library and single module command
line tool for going from binary to hex and back.


command line recipes
====================
Dump binary data in hex form::

   $ python -m hexdump binary.dat
   0000000000: 00 00 00 5B 68 65 78 64  75 6D 70 5D 00 00 00 00  ...[hexdump]....
   0000000010: 00 11 22 33 44 55 66 77  88 99 AA BB CC DD EE FF  .."3DUfw........

Restore binary from a saved hex dump::

   $ python -m hexdump --restore hexdump.txt > binary.dat


basic API
=========
.. function:: dump(binary, size=2)

   Helper to convert binary data (bytes in Python 3 and
   str in Python 2) to string like '00 DE AD BE EF'.
   `size` argument specifies length of text chunks.

.. function:: dehex(text)

   Helper to convert from hex string to binary data
   stripping whitespaces from `hextext` if necessary.


advanced API: write full dumps
==============================

Python 2::

   >>> hexdump('\x00'*16)
   00000000: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................

Python 3::

   >>> hexdump('\x00'*16)
   ...
   TypeError: Abstract unicode data (expected bytes)
   >>> hexdump.hexdump(b'\x00'*16)
   00000000: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
 
Python 3 strings are arrays of abstract indexes in unicode
table. That's why hexdump is unable to dump it. You need to
convert string to binary data first by specifying how integers
are mapped to binary values, that means the encoding.

Here is how the same Russian text looks when transformed from
abstract unicode integers of Python 3 to bytes in Windows-1251
encoding and to bytes in UTF-8.

   >>> message = 'интерференция'
   >>> hexdump(message.encode('windows-1251'))
   00000000: E8 ED F2 E5 F0 F4 E5 F0  E5 ED F6 E8 FF           .............
   >>> hexdump(message.encode('utf-8'))
   00000000: D0 B8 D0 BD D1 82 D0 B5  D1 80 D1 84 D0 B5 D1 80  ................
   00000010: D0 B5 D0 BD D1 86 D0 B8  D1 8F                    ..........


advanced API: restore binary data from different hexdump formats
================================================================

Python 2::

   >>> res = restore(
   ... '0010: 00 11 22 33 44 55 66 77  88 99 AA BB CC DD EE FF  .."3DUfw........')
   >>> res
   '\x00\x11"3DUfw\x88\x99\xaa\xbb\xcc\xdd\xee\xff'
   >>> type(res)
   <type 'str'>

Python 3::

   >>> res = restore(
   ... '0010: 00 11 22 33 44 55 66 77  88 99 AA BB CC DD EE FF  .."3DUfw........')
   >>> res
   b'\x00\x11"3DUfw\x88\x99\xaa\xbb\xcc\xdd\xee\xff'
   >>> type(res)
   <class 'bytes'>


run self-tests
==============
Manually::

   $ hexdump.py --test output.txt
   $ diff -u3 hextest.txt output.txt

Automatically with `tox`::

   $ tox


ChangeLog
=========
3.1 (2014-10-20)
 * implemented workaround against mysterious coding
   issue with Python 3 (see revision 51302cf)
 * fix Python 3 installs for systems where UTF-8 is
   not default (Windows), thanks to George Schizas
   (the problem was caused by reading of README.txt)

3.0 (2014-09-07)
 * remove unused int2byte() helper
 * add dehex(text) helper to convert hex string
   to binary data
 * add 'size' argument to dump() helper to specify
   length of chunks

2.0 (2014-02-02)
 * add --restore option to command line mode to get
   binary data back from hex dump
 * support saving test output with `--test logfile`
 * restore() from hex strings without spaces
 * restore() now raises TypeError if input data is
   not string
 * hexdump() and dumpgen() now don't return unicode
   strings in Python 2.x when generator is requested

1.0 (2013-12-30)
 * length of address is reduced from 10 to 8
 * hexdump() got new 'result' keyword argument, it
   can be either 'print', 'generator' or 'return'
 * actual dumping logic is now in new dumpgen()
   generator function
 * new dump(binary) function that takes binary data
   and returns string like "66 6F 72 6D 61 74"
 * new genchunks(mixed, size) function that chunks
   both sequences and file like objects

0.5 (2013-06-10)
 * hexdump is now also a command line utility (no
   restore yet)

0.4 (2013-06-09)
 * fix installation with Python 3 for non English
   versions of Windows, thanks to George Schizas

0.3 (2013-04-29)
 * fully Python 3 compatible

0.2 (2013-04-28)
 * restore() to recover binary data from a hex dump in
   native, Far Manager and Scapy text formats (others
   might work as well)
 * restore() is Python 3 compatible

0.1 (2013-04-28)
 * working hexdump() function for Python 2


Release checklist
=================

| [ ] run tests  
| [ ] update version in hexdump.py  
| [ ] update ChangeLog in README.txt from hexdump.py  
| [ ] python setup.py register sdist upload  


License
=======
Public Domain


Credits
=======
anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com>
George Schizas
