How to view files in binary from bash?

hexdump -C yourfile.bin

unless you want to edit it of course. Most linux distros have hexdump by default (but obviously not all).

vi your_filename

hit esc

Type :%!xxd to view the hex strings, the n :%!xxd -r to return to normal editing.

As a fallback there's always od -xc filename

sudo apt-get install bless

Bless is GUI tool which can view, edit, seach and a lot more. Its very light weight.

If you want to open binary files (in CentOS 7):

strings <binary_filename>

Hexyl formats nicely: sudo apt install hexyl

$ echo -n 'Hello world!' | hd
00000000  48 65 6c 6c 6f 20 77 6f  72 6c 64 21              |Hello world!|
0000000c

To get the output all in a single line in Hexadecimal:

xxd -p yourfile.bin | tr -d '\n'

See Improved Hex editing in the Vim Tips Wiki.

You can open emacs (in terminal mode, using emacs -nw for instance), and then use Hexl mode: M-x hexl-mode.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Editing-Binary-Files.html

to convert a file to its binary codes(hexadecimal representation) we say:

xxd filename                                         #

e.g:

xxd hello.c                                          #

to see all the contents and codes in a binary file , we could use commands like readelf and objdump, hexdump ,... .

for example if we want to see all the convert all the contents of a binary file(executable, shared libraries, object files) we say:

hexdump binaryfilename

e.g.

hexdump /bin/bash

but readelf is the best utility for analyzing elf(executable and linking format) files. so if we say:

readelf -a /bin/bash

all the contents in the binary file bash would be shown to us, also we could provide different flags for readelf to see all the sections and headers of an elf file separately, for example if we want to see only the elf header we say:

readelf -h /bin/bash

for reading all the segments of the file:

readelf -l /bin/bash

for reading all the sections of the file:

readelf -S /bin/sh

but again as summary , for reading a normal file like "hello.c" and a binary file like bash in path /bin/bash in linux we say:

xxd hello.c

readelf -a /bin/bash

I usually do

hexdump -Xv /path/to/the_file.bin | less

Optionally, one can use -C to see corresponding characters in addition to hex output, or try -x or -o instead of -X just for fun. Option -v is for non-squeezing output as described in hexdump --help. Omitting | less will drop the output to the console instead of more convenient and interactive less.

P.S.: If which hexdump does not give you any hint, on Arch-based distros you can find hexdump location by doing sudo pacman -Fy (if your package DB is not fresh) followed by pacman -F hexdump to find the package(s) containing utils named hexdump. If the latter gives you something meaningful (like system/util-linux 2.40.2-1) in the first row, you can invoke

sudo pacman `pacman -Fq hexdump | head -n 1`

and thus install hexdump to your system.

You can use hexdump binary file

sudo apt-get install hexdump

hexdump -C yourfile.bin