010 Editor vs GNU hexedit

010 Editor is a text and hex editor for working with text files and binary data on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its Binary Templates represent files as hierarchical data structures, with variables connected to bytes that can be edited. The maker says templates can parse and edit more than 300 formats, including ZIP, BMP, and WAV. The text editor handles files larger than 50 GB and includes syntax highlighting, column mode, and unlimited undo. Tree-sitter provides real-time parsing for more than 45 syntaxes, including C/C++, Python, Rust, JavaScript, and JSON. Analysis tools include binary comparison, search and replace, data visualization, checksums and hashes, a histogram, and disassembly. C-like scripts can automate edits, run from the command line without a user interface, and use an integrated debugger. An online repository lets users download, install, and submit templates and scripts. The maker describes uses in digital forensics, malware analysis, memory and process analysis, and data recovery. Process editing is available only on Windows. A free 30-day trial and 60-day money-back guarantee are offered. New-user perpetual licenses cost $59.95 as a one-time purchase for home or academic use and $149.95, paid once for commercial use; each is for one user and includes one year of free support and upgrades.

GNU hexedit is a free Linux terminal program for viewing and editing file contents as hexadecimal values or ASCII text. It can read a device piece at a time, search forward or backward for strings in either representation, and save edits. Selection commands allow marking, copying, pasting, saving a copied region to another file, and filling a selected area with a string. The --sector option displays whole sectors and makes scrolling advance sector by sector. Keyboard commands control the terminal interface; --color works only when supported by the operating system. Changes remain in memory until saved, so large fill operations may trigger a warning. Read-only files cannot be changed and are reported as non-writable. The author describes hexedit as open source under the GNU General Public License. The maker page links to source archive 1.6, while Git builds use ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make. It supports disk editing but has no binary comparison, templates, scripting, or plugins.