Binary editor basics

The Binary editor allows you to edit any file in a binary form. The editor supports display in Hexadecimal, Binary, Octal and Decimal forms. The editor always displays the data in 8-bit ANSI format.

The binary editor screen

The editor displays the file contents in bytes. Each number in the data display area corresponds to one byte in the disk file.

The editor never has a horizontal scroll bar since it always formats the data to the current width of the window. The editor computes the maximum number of bytes it can display on a line, given by the window width, and formats the display to fit. In the example below 16 bytes are displayed per line.

To move the caret from the binary to the ANSI display areas and visa versa with the keyboard use the Tab key. With the mouse simply click in the area with the mouse.

The Current edit position is selected to make it easier to detect on screen. The edit position is selected in both the number data and ANSI data display areas.

Click in the various areas of the binary editor window to learn more about their function.

Searching

The editor allows you to search a file for a numeric value, ANSI or Unicode string. The searching operates much like the text editor in that two dialogs are used. The first dialog is a prompt dialog in which you enter the search value and any search options. If a match is found then the dialog is closed and a smaller modeless dialog is opened. This smaller dialog allows you to search for more matches either before or after the current position.

Matched data is shown selected in the data display areas.

Menus

Window navigation.

Using the Alt+0 hot key you can always bring the project window to the foreground.

Alt+1 through Alt+9 can be used to bring an editor window to the foreground. The windows are numbered from left to right by their order in the list of selection tabs. These hot keys can also be assigned to open a specific module.

The binary editor window can also be converted to a stand alone window via the options menu.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The menu always displays the keyboard shortcuts for any menu item which has a shortcut. Therefore when in doubt you can check the menu for any available keyboard shortcut.

Key Function
Ctrl+S Save changes to disk.
Ctrl+F Find
F3 Repeat last Find.
Ctrl+G Position to a given file offset.
Ctrl+B Binary display mode.
Ctrl+O Octal display mode.
Ctrl+D Decimal display mode.
Ctrl+H Hexadecimal display mode.
Alt+0 Bring the project window to the foreground.
Alt+1..9 User defined editor hot keys. These open a specific module, or bring and editor window to the foreground.
Ctrl+Tab Bring the next tabbed window to the foreground.
Shift+Ctrl+Tab Bring the previous tabbed window to the foreground.
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