hex.md

hex - BSON-friendly hex dump utility.

Usage

hex <options> < infile.bson

Options:

• -h help
• -v verbose style dump
• -raw raw hex dump with no 'bson awareness'

Purpose

This is a very simple hex dump utility which could be used with any binary file. However, adds a tiny amount of BSON awareness, which can be useful when dumping larger BSON files.

Specifically, it is aware that the first four bytes of a BSON document indicate its size. It will output the dump of those bytes on a line by itself, then, the rest of that document, then, a blank separator line. Thus it makes it easy to find the point of demarcation for each BSON document in the dump. Trivial but very useful.

Example

~/bsontools $ ./fromjson > out.bson
{"hello": "world"}
{"BSON": ["awesome", 5.05, 1986]}

~/bsontools $ ./hex < out.bson
16 00 00 00 
02 68 65 6C 6C 6F 00 06 00 00 00 77 6F 72 6C 64 
00 00 

31 00 00 00 
04 42 53 4F 4E 00 26 00 00 00 02 30 00 08 00 00 
00 61 77 65 73 6F 6D 65 00 01 31 00 33 33 33 33 
33 33 14 40 10 32 00 C2 07 00 00 00 00 

~/bsontools $ ./hex -v < out.bson 
16 00 00 00                                         22
02 68 65 6C 6C 6F 00 06 00 00 00 77 6F 72 6C 64     .hello.....world
00 00                                               ..

31 00 00 00                                         49
04 42 53 4F 4E 00 26 00 00 00 02 30 00 08 00 00     .BSON.&....0....
00 61 77 65 73 6F 6D 65 00 01 31 00 33 33 33 33     .awesome..1.3333
33 33 14 40 10 32 00 C2 07 00 00 00 00              33.@.2.......

~/bsontools $ ./hex -raw < out.bson
16 00 00 00 02 68 65 6C 6C 6F 00 06 00 00 00 77 
6F 72 6C 64 00 00 31 00 00 00 04 42 53 4F 4E 00 
26 00 00 00 02 30 00 08 00 00 00 61 77 65 73 6F 
6D 65 00 01 31 00 33 33 33 33 33 33 14 40 10 32 
00 C2 07 00 00 00 00 

~/bsontools $