Another case is that you want to use the data of a file in a new way that’s not supported by the application that wrote the file.Ī very common example for file modifications on byte level is editing saved games. This can be the only chance if you have a corrupt file and the application that wrote the file is not able to read it in again.

Hex editors are often used to bypass a higher-level application and see what’s actually stored in a file. But still files can be found that originate from IBM mainframe systems and are derived from EBCDIC codepages. Most text encodings are based on ASCII, a 7-bit codepage. Non-printable characters are usually displayed as a dot to indicate there’s no space character.Īdvanced hex editors offer also non-standard encodings not so commonly used. Often you can select which text encoding should be applied to get readable text (for the parts that actually represent text). Most hex editor display both the raw data in hexadecimal form and a textual interpretation of it using some text encoding. This implies that hex editors require the user to know how to interpret a file of a certain format. High-level applications like Word or Excel provide only an interpreted view on a file. Hex editors allow you to view and edit the uninterpreted contents of a file. No matter which application you used to create a file – hex editors show every bit and byte of it. A hex editor for Windows, also called byte editor or binary editor, is a truly universal tool.

Free binary editor