Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Binary Editor Wanted
Message-ID: <13413@ncoast.ORG>
Date: 25 Feb 89 01:23:52 GMT
References: <10420@drutx.ATT.COM> <1951@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <3216@silver.bacs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh
Lines: 41

As quoted from <3216@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> by burleigh@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (frank burleigh):
+---------------
| In article <1951@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes:
| >But, what I *really* need is a binary/hex editor with CUT AND PASTE! 
| >What a concept: they don't exist.  Not even delete.  "Oh, that's too
| >dangerous" the critics cry, you could completely mung anything you're
| >working on.  Of course, that's a power tool!  Now I have to write C code
| >to delete a couple stray bites out of a data file, etc.  It really grabs
| >my gizzard.
| 
| You folks might try WordPerfect Corp's Program Editor, which is part of
| their Library 2.0 group of utilities.  While PE is meant as a straight
| text editor, you can turn "interpret" off and load anything, including
| program files.  I don't see any reason why you couldn't then use the
| normal cut/delete/paste features of the editor.  It will also show the
| file in hex mode by turning on `reveal,' though that will only appear
| int he bottom half of the screen.
+---------------

Gack.  WP's "reveal codes" is a feature from Hell.  If I want a non-WYSIWYG
editor, I'll use Jove (possibly combined with some form of ?roff or TeX),
thank you.

There are any number of these beasts for Unix; some of them might be
portable.  One I have seen translates the binary file into hex and runs your
favorite text editor on it; it's probably the simplest to port.  Others I've
seen need some form of curses, at minimum.

I have one I wrote, whose file operations were deliberately kept reasonable
portable.  Alas, it currently exists only as a 35-page source listing, and I
haven't had the inclination to try to re-key the whole bloody thing into the
computer again.  If nothing else, however, it indicates that it's quite
possible for one or more of the existing-in-machine-readable-form binary
editors from Unix to be portable to DOS.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc	     allbery@ncoast.org
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