Settings:Editor:Hex mode

The Editor » Hex mode branch of Settings has the following options.

Open files containing hex 00's (nulls) in hex mode

When a file is loaded the editor checks the first 7 kilobytes of the file, and if it contains more than two nulls (00 byte) the file is assumed to be a binary (instead of plain text) file. If this option is selected, any file containing nulls (other than files with UTF-16 encoding, where hex nulls are expected) will be opened automatically in hex mode. If this option is unchecked, then a file containing hex nulls would be opened as a normal text file for editing.

The editor will respect and retain the active mode (text mode or hex mode) for the active file when reloading the file (either via "Revert to Saved", file change detection, or file change polling).

Allow editing of text files with hex 00's without converting them to spaces

Since nulls are not valid in plain text files, they will be converted to spaces if you edit a file containing hex nulls in text mode (again, with the exception of UTF-16 files). This conversion happens only if you edit the file. Select this option to prevent the conversion of hex nulls in this case.

We do not recommend editing binary files in plain text mode, as this may cause unwanted conversion of binary data if you've forced the editor to treat it as plain text.

Additionally, enabling this setting may cause some functionality (like the clipboard) not to work past hex nulls, although this should not effect general editing.

Number of hex characters per line

This setting defines the number of hex characters to be shown in each line of the hex editor display. The application must be restarted before any changes to this value take effect.

See also:

• Hex edit
• Hex insert/delete
• Hex copy selected
• Hex find
• Hex replace
• Hex edit (EBCDIC)