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Is there a good way to display the contents of a file as binary?

I am creating a program that needs to save and load a 2D arrays from a files. When loading a saved file the result appears different. I need to be able to view the contents of the saved file in plain binary to tell if my problem in in my save or load function.

Is there a program like octal dump but is binary dump?

Thanks.

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  • @Dave - ?? how is this not programming related? Commented Mar 19, 2010 at 23:00
  • @Eric - you might get better results if you specify what platform/language your are dealing with. Commented Mar 19, 2010 at 23:01
  • The reason why it "appears different" is most probably an encoding problem. Commented Mar 19, 2010 at 23:03

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On linux/unix (or Windows + cygwin) there is the "od" utility which dumps files in many formats.

E.g. hexadecimal:

od -t x1 file...

I hope it may help you. Regards

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Just for fun, using Ruby from the command line:

cat file | ruby -e "puts STDIN.read.unpack('B*')[0].scan(/[01]{8}/).join(' ')"
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Having the raw binary dump is too overwhelming for most people. Consider using od -x, or if you need a more specific format then examine the various options for -t.

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