BinEd vs wxHexEditor

BinEd is a free, open-source binary and hex viewer and editor written in Java. It shows data as hexadecimal codes and text, with binary, octal, and decimal modes. Editing supports Unicode and other character sets, insert or overwrite modes, text or hexadecimal search with highlighted matches, and undo and redo. The maker says the editor supports files up to exabytes; on Android, that capacity is qualified as partial file mode. BinEd runs on desktop platforms supporting Java 8 or later, and is also available as an Android APK and browser demo. The project uses Apache License 2.0, though additional addons may have different licenses. Listed integrations include NetBeans, IntelliJ, Eclipse, JDeveloper, BlueJ, jEdit, Autopsy, and Ghidra. The feature list marks byte-for-byte comparison as complete and search/replace as partial in the editor application. The maker also lists possible Java heap-space freezes after many large modifications, possible delta-mode corruption if another application changes files simultaneously, and memory leaks.

wxHexEditor is a free hex and disk editor for examining and changing binary data, with a particular focus on large files on Linux. It uses 64-bit file descriptors and supports files or devices up to 2^64 bytes. The site reports about 25 MB of memory use with multiple files larger than 8 GB open, without copying the whole file into RAM. You can insert or delete bytes without creating a temporary file, compare binary files and merge nearby results, and use its integrated x86 disassembly. It can open devices on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X for disk and sector editing; raw sector editing can be used to work on partition tables and filesystems or recover data. Other tools include many encodings, checksum functions, XOR operations, color tags, and saving selections as dump files. Downloads are listed for Linux, Mac Intel, and Win32. The latest release event listed on the home page is version 0.24 Beta, dated December 31, 2017. The site’s supported languages are English, Turkish, and partially Russian.