README for the hexidump, a Hex-Ascii Dump and Editing Program.

hexidump public release 1.5
is Freeware and is freely 
distributable with no limitations
Copyright Wayne O. Jackson, 1998
(http://www.magicnet.net/~wjack) 
(wjack@magicnet.net)

INSTALL:
========

You should be able to use the prebuilt hexidump binary that came with this file. 
It was built in C with Borland 5.02. I was building it with Watcom v10.5a, but 
I finally figured out how to make Borland executables that don't have any c++ code 
in them smaller, plus I tested the Hexidump.exe binary made with borland and 
watcom, and the borland executable was faster. The arguments I gave to build the 
file are "bcc -O2 -4 -ms hexidump.c noehs.lib". After compiling I compressed the 
file with Lzexe.exe, and that reduced it by about 6k. I included the source, so 
you can build it yourself if you want, or if your a greenhorn at programming like 
I am, then you might be able to learn something from it, but let me warn you the 
source is pretty sloppy, and might be hard to figure out.

WHAT IT IS?:
============

hexidump is a program used for dumping the hex and ascii values of each byte of a 
file, also you can edit the byte values. This is the first program that I've made 
that actually does something useful. I'm just learning programming, so there are 
alot of other programs around that can do this better, but it seems to work, even 
though it is slow. There are only a few arguments that hexidump recognizes. If you 
want to dump a file to see the hex and ascii values of each byte, just type at the 
command prompt: hexidump infile outfile, with infile being the file you want dumped, 
and outfile being the name of the file you want it dumped to. Keep in mind that the 
output file will be over 4x larger than the input file. I hexidumped Netscape-4.0.5, 
which is almost 4mb., and the output file was almost 18mb. If you want to edit a 
file go to the command prompt and type: hexidump -e filename hex_address hex_byte_value, 
with the first argument -e letting hexidump know you want to edit a file, and the 
second argument filename of course being the file you want to edit, and the third 
argument hex_address being the hex value of the location in the file you want to 
start at for your editing, and the last argument hex_byte_value being the value 
of the byte or bytes you want to change with a space between each byte, for example 
if I was wanting to edit 4 bytes in the file netscape.exe begining at the hex address 
ffff with the values 00 0f 20 ff I would do a hexidump -e netscape.exe ffff 0 f 20 ff.
Make sure to make a backup copy of any file your going to edit just in case it doesn't 
turn out right. I've edited a few files with hexidump with no problem, but you never 
know. Hexidump works properly on a system with an i86 type proccessor, so Intel, AMD, 
and Cyrix should work fine, but other types may not work properly.

PROBLEMS:
=========

If you have any problems with hexidump, or if it doesn't work like it's
suppose to, please let me know so I can fix it, also if you have any 
ideas or suggestions to make it better drop me a line at wjack@magicnet.net.

Wayne O. Jackson