NAME

Data::Hexify - Perl extension for hexdumping arbitrary data

SYNOPSIS

use Data::Hexify;
print STDERR Hexify(\$blob);

DESCRIPTION

This module exports one subroutine: Hexify.

Hexify formats arbitrary (possible binary) data into a format suitable for hex dumps in the style of xd or hexl.

The first, or only, argument to Hexify contains the data, or a reference to the data, to be hexified. Hexify will return a string that prints as follows:

0000: 70 61 63 6b 61 67 65 20 44 61 74 61 3a 3a 48 65  package Data::He
0010: 78 69 66 79 3b 0a 0a 75 73 65 20 35 2e 30 30 36  xify;..use 5.006

and so on. At the left is the (hexadecimal) index of the data, then a number of hex bytes, followed by the chunk of data with unprintables replaced by periods.

The optional second argument to Hexify must be a hash or a hash reference, containing values for any of the following parameters:

first

The first byte of the data to be processed. Default is to start from the beginning of the data.

length

The number of bytes to be processed. Default is to proceed all data.

chunk

The number of bytes to be processed per line of output. Default is 16.

group

The number of bytes to be grouped together. Default is 1 (no grouping). If used, it must be a divisor of the chunk size.

duplicates

When set, duplicate lines of output are suppressed and replaced by a single line reading **SAME**.

Duplicate suppression is enabled by default.

showdata

A reference to a subroutine that is used to produce a printable string from a chunk of data. By default, a subroutine is used that replaces unwanted bytes by periods.

The subroutine gets the chunk of data passed as argument, and should return a printable string of at most chunksize characters.

align

Align the result to chunksize bytes. This is relevant only when processing data not from the beginning. For example, when first is 10, the result would become:

0000:                ...    74 61 3a 3a 48 65            ta::He
0010: 78 69 66 79 3b ... 65 20 35 2e 30 30 36  xify;..use 5.006
... and so on ...

Alignment is on by default. Without alignment, the result would be:

000a: 74 61 3a 3a 48 ... 79 3b 0a 0a 75 73 65  ta::Hexify;..use
001a: 20 35 2e 30 30 ... 73 65 20 73 74 72 69   5.006;.use stri
... and so on ...

start

Pretend that the data started at this byte (while in reality it starts at byte first). The above example, with start => 0, becomes:

0000: 74 61 3a 3a 48 ... 79 3b 0a 0a 75 73 65  ta::Hexify;..use
0010: 20 35 2e 30 30 ... 73 65 20 73 74 72 69   5.006;.use stri
... and so on ...

SEE ALSO

Data::Dumper, YAML.

AUTHOR

Johan Vromans, <jvromans@squirrel.nl>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2004 Squirrel Consultancy

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.6.0 or, at your option, any other version of Perl 5 you may have available.