What language is to binary, as Perl is to text?

Posted by ehdr on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by ehdr
Published on 2009-06-14T18:31:23Z Indexed on 2010/03/18 23:21 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 404

Filed under:

binary-data

|

scripting

|

fileparsing

|

patching

I am looking for a scripting (or higher level programming) language (or e.g. modules for Python or similar languages) for effortlessly analyzing and manipulating binary data in files (e.g. core dumps), much like Perl allows manipulating text files very smoothly.

Things I want to do include presenting arbitrary chunks of the data in various forms (binary, decimal, hex), convert data from one endianess to another, etc. That is, things you normally would use C or assembly for, but I'm looking for a language which allows for writing tiny pieces of code for highly specific, one-time purposes very quickly.

Any suggestions?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about binary-data

Save binarydata into a image file in c# / silverlight 3

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
byte[] binaryData = new Byte[pngStream.Length]; long bytesRead = pngStream.Read(binaryData, 0, (int)pngStream.Length); string base64String = System.Convert.ToBase64String(binaryData, 0, … >>> More
C#: My World Clock

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
[Placeholder: I will post the entire project soon] I have been working on cleaning my office of 8 years of stuff from several engineers working on many projects. It turns out that we have a few extra single board computers with displays, so at the end of the day last Friday I though why not create… >>> More
Reading binary data from serial port using Dejan TComport Delphi component

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Apologies for this question but I am a bit of a noob with Delphi. I am using Dejan TComport component to get data from a serial port. A box of equipment connected to the port sends about 100 bytes of binary data to the serial port. What I want to do is extract the bytes as numerical values into an… >>> More
How to find the file format from binary data

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, We have a Oracle 9i database and OrderDetails table which has a column to store binary data for product images. These images can be viewed only using a 3rd party tool. I have no idea which 3rd party tool. and I have no idea of the format of the image. Is there anyway from the binary data we… >>> More
Postgresql performance question about inserting or updating many row containing binary data

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, I have a table A where I put many image resources with a daily frequence. Every record of table A references another table B in which there are only fixed records. My doubt is the following, better to clean all records in A and then inserting new images or updating only the binary column… >>> More

Related posts about scripting

Advantages to Server Scripting languages over Client Side Scripting languages

as seen on DotNetBlocks - Search for 'DotNetBlocks'
There are numerous advantages to server scripting languages over client side scripting languages in regards to creating web sites that are more compelling compared to a standard static site. Server side scripts are executed on a web server during the compilation of data to return to a client… >>> More
Scripting the Vim editor, Part 5: Event-driven scripting and automation

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>IBM Developerworks:</b> "Why repeat yourself? You can configure Vim’s comprehensive event model to execute time-saving scripts whenever particular editing events—such as loading a file or switching between editor modes—occur." >>> More
What does (Lua) game scripting mean?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I've read that Lua is often used for embedded scripting and in particular game for scripting. I find it hard to picture how it is used exactly. Can you describe why and for which features and for which audience it is used? This questions isn't specifically addressing Lua, but rather any embedded… >>> More
How to find from GUI whether Client Side scripting or server side scripting is running

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
We have a GUI which runs on ASP.NET 2.0 framework (Client-Server model). From the support perspective how can one find whether the pages which are opening on GUI at any point of time is a server side scripting or Client side scripting. The reason why I ask this is because I understand that some of… >>> More
UNIX Shell-scripting: UDV

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a simple unix shell script: #!/bin/bash # abort the script if a command fails set -e # abort the script if an unitialized shell variable is used set -u i = 0; while [$i -l 1] do src/meshpro input/martini.off video/noise/image$i… >>> More