Create Binary files in UNIX

Question

This question was out there for a while and I thought I should offer some bonus points if I can get it to work.

What did I do…

Recently at work, I wrote a par

Answer 1

There's a tool binmake allowing to describe in text format some binary data and generate a binary file (or output to stdout). It allows to change the endianess and number formats and accepts comments.

First get and compile binmake (the binary program will be in bin/):

$ git clone https://github.com/dadadel/binmake
$ cd binmake
$ make

Create your text file file.txt:

# an exemple of file description of binary data to generate
# set endianess to big-endian
big-endian

# default number is hexadecimal
00112233

# man can explicit a number type: %b means binary number
%b0100110111100000

# change endianess to little-endian
little-endian

# if no explicit, use default
44556677

# bytes are not concerned by endianess
88 99 aa bb

# change default to decimal
decimal

# following number is now decimal
0123

# strings are delimited by " or '
"this is some raw string"

# explicit hexa number starts with %x
%xff

Generate your binary file file.bin:

$ ./binmake file.txt file.bin
$ hexdump file.bin -C
00000000  00 11 22 33 4d e0 77 66  55 44 88 99 aa bb 7b 74  |.."3M.wfUD....{t|
00000010  68 69 73 20 69 73 20 73  6f 6d 65 20 72 61 77 20  |his is some raw |
00000020  73 74 72 69 6e 67 ff                              |string.|
00000027

You can also pipe it using stdin and stdout:

$ echo '32 decimal 32 %x61 61' | ./binmake | hexdump -C
00000000  32 20 61 3d                                       |2 a=|
00000004