Convert binary data to hexadecimal in a shell script

Question

I want to convert binary data to hexadecimal, just that, no fancy formatting and all. hexdump seems too clever, and it \"overformats\" for me. I want to take x

Answer 1

Perhaps you could write your own small tool in C, and compile it on-the-fly:

int main (void) {
  unsigned char data[1024];
  size_t numread, i;

  while ((numread = read(0, data, 1024)) > 0) {
    for (i = 0; i < numread; i++) {
      printf("%02x ", data[i]);
    }
  }

  return 0;
}

And then feed it from the standard input:

cat /bin/ls | ./a.out

You can even embed this small C program in a shell script using the heredoc syntax.