Comparison of hex editors

Last updated

The following is a comparison of notable hex editors.

Contents

General

GUI Console Software license Latest stable versionLatest release dateWindowsMacintoshLinux
HxD YesNoProprietary freeware2.5.0.0February 11, 2021 Win95, WinNT4 and upNoNo
010 Editor YesNo Proprietary 15.0.1October 11, 2024YesYesYes
beye NoYes GPL-2.0-only or GPL-3.0-only 6.1.0December 12, 2009YesYesYes
bvi NoYes GPL-3.0-or-later 1.4.2 [1] March 7, 2023 DOS, Win95 and upYesYes
Cheat Engine YesNoProprietary freeware7.2August 14, 2021YesYes, ver. 6.2No
GNU Emacs YesYes GPL-3.0-or-later 29.1 [2] July 30, 2023YesYesYes
FlexHex YesNoProprietary freeware for personal use2.7October 12, 2018 Windows XP and upNoNo
Frhed (Free Hex Editor)YesNo GPL-2.0-or-later 1.7.1July 30, 2009 Win98 and upNoNo
Hexer NoYes BSD-3-Clause 1.06April 24, 2020YesYesYes
Hiew NoYes Proprietary 8.81March 24, 2024YesNoNo
ImHex YesYes GPL-2.0-only 1.35.4July 9, 2024 [3] YesYesYes
VEDIT YesYes Proprietary 6.24.2Jan 1, 2015YesNoNo
UltraEdit YesNo Proprietary 26.10 (Windows)
18.0 (Linux / Mac OS X)		May 7, 2019
January 2, 2018		YesYesYes
WinHex YesNo Proprietary 21.0December 13, 2023 Win95 and upNoNo
Vim YesYesVim9.1.0 [4] January 2, 2024YesYesYes

Features

Maximum file sizePartial file loadingDisk sector editingProcess memory editingData inspector Bit editing Insert/delete bytes Character encodings (ao)Search Unicode File formats Disassembler File compareFind in filesBookmarksMacro Text editor
HxD 8 EiB [5] YesWindows 9x/NT and upYesYesYesYesANSI, ASCII, OEM, EBCDIC, MacintoshYesNoIndividual instructions onlyYesNoYesNoNo
010 Editor 8 EiB YesYesWinNT onlyYesYesYesANSI, OEM, Unicode, UTF-8, EBCDIC, CustomYes300 [6] YesYesYesYesYesYes
beye 8  PiB YesNoYesYesANSI, EBCDIC, ASCII, MacintoshYes29 [7] AVR, Java, x86, i386, x86-64, ARM/XScale, PowerPC, PPC64 YesNo
bvi Limited by RAMYesYesYesANSI, ASCII NoNoYes and replaceYes
Emacs 2.3 EB [8] [9] [10] [11] Check-green.svgUn­knownNoNoNoNoYesYes [12] Un­knownNoNoUn­knownUn­knownYes [13] Yes
FlexHex Unlimited[ citation needed ]YesYesYesYesYesANSI, OEM, UTF-16Yes2 [14] [15] NoYesNoYesNo
Frhed Limited by RAMYesNo(read only)YesYesANSI, OEMYesNoNoYesNoYesNo
Hiew Unlimited[ citation needed ]YesWinNT onlyYesYesYes ASCII, OEM, Unicode, customYesNo x86, x86-64, MMX, SSE 4.2, 3DNow! - all assembler, ARM YesYesYes
VEDIT Standard, 2 GiB, Pro 64, unlimited[ citation needed ]YesDOS version onlyNoYesYesANSI, OEM, EBCDIC, ASCII, customNoNoNoYesYesYesYesYes
UltraEdit >4 GiBYesNoNoNoNoYesANSI, OEM, EBCDIC, ASCII, Mac, Unix, UTF-8YesNoNoYesYesYes
WinHex Unlimited[ citation needed ]YesYesYesYesYesPartial support of these formats: ANSI, UNICODE, OEM, UTF-8/UTF-16, EBCDIC, ASCII Yes44 [16] [17] Only x86 Intel opcodesYesYes and replaceYes [18] No
vim Limited by RAMNoNoNoNoYes [19] YesASCII, ISO-8859, DOS (OEM), UTF-8, UTF-16, partial EBCDIC (compilation required), unicodeYesNoNoYes [20] NoPlug-in [21] YesYes
ImHex UnlimitedYesYesYesYesYesYesANSI, OEM, Unicode, UTF-8, EBCDIC, Shift-JIS, CustomYes143 [22] YesYesYesYesYesNo
Maximum file sizePartial file loadingDisk sector editingProcess memory editingData inspector Bit editing Insert/delete bytes Character encodings (ao)Search Unicode File formats Disassembler File compareFind in filesBookmarksMacro Text editor

See also

Notes

ao: ANSI is the Windows character set, OEM is the DOS character set. Both are based on ASCII.

References

  1. ↑ "BVI Binary VIsual editor: Download Page".
  2. ↑ "GNU Emacs". GNU.org . Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  3. ↑ "Releases · WerWolv/ImHex". GitHub .
  4. ↑ "Vim 9.1 released : Vim online".
  5. ↑ HxD features
  6. ↑ "010 Editor - Binary Template Repository". SweetScape Software Inc. Retrieved 2022-10-05.
  7. ↑ "beye / Code / [r238] /newtwindow-branch/src/plugins/bin/". SourceForge . Retrieved 2022-10-05.
  8. ↑ "GNU Emacs 23.2 NEWS -- history of user-visible changes".
  9. ↑ "Buffers". A buffer's size cannot be larger than some maximum, which is defined by the largest buffer position representable by Emacs integers. This is because Emacs tracks buffer positions using that data type. For typical 64-bit machines, this maximum buffer size is 2^{61} - 2 bytes, or about 2 EiB. For typical 32-bit machines, the maximum is usually 2^{29} - 2 bytes, or about 512 MiB. Buffer sizes are also limited by the amount of memory in the system.
  10. ↑ "Does Emacs have problems with large files?".
  11. ↑ "GNU emacs manual - Narrowing".
  12. ↑ "Special Input for Incremental Search". gnu.org.
  13. ↑ "Bookmarks". gnu.org.
  14. ↑ "User-defined Data Fields". Inv Softworks LLC. Archived from the original on December 27, 2005. Retrieved 2022-10-05.
  15. ↑ The file "FlexHEX\Structures\Disk.fsd" of FlexHex 2.71 installation contains example parsers for FAT and NFTS file system headers
  16. ↑ "Additional Templates for WinHex & X-Ways Forensics". X-Ways Software Technology AG. Retrieved 2022-10-05. lists ~30 formats.
  17. ↑ WinHex 20.6 release package "winhex.zip" contains 14 template files with ".tpl" suffix with parsers for various storage system formats.
  18. ↑ WinHex: Scripting
  19. ↑
    help eval
  20. ↑ vimdiff
  21. ↑ vim-bookmarks
  22. ↑ "ImHex-Patterns". GitHub . Retrieved 2023-01-29.
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