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A Friendly Hex Viewer: hexyl

Inspect binary data with colored categories and an address column.

LinuxbinarytextcliLow risk
Run hexyl file.bin to print a colored hexadecimal view of the file.

01Command

Command
$ hexyl file.bin

02What it does

hexyl colour-codes ASCII, whitespace, null bytes and non-printable bytes, adds a border and supports offsets with --skip and --length. It is easier on the eyes than od or xxd for quick binary inspection.

03Risk

RiskLow risk
Requirementssudo apt install hexyl
!Warning: Very large files produce a lot of output; use --length or pipe to a pager.

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

  • hexyl
    Official project · vendor-doc · 2026-09-20
    Evidence: Debian packages hexyl, a command-line hex viewer with colours and structure cues.
  • Debian package: hexyl
    Debian · vendor-doc · 2026-09-20
    Evidence: Debian packages hexyl, a command-line hex viewer with colours and structure cues.

Last verified: 2026-09-22 · Category: Developer

06Related solutions

Create and Apply Patches with diff -u and patch
Linuxdiffpatchtext

Generate a unified diff between two files, apply it to another copy with patch, and reverse it with patch -R.

Low risk ✓ 2026-09-17