Bless vs GNU hexedit
Bless
github.comGNU hexedit
rigaux.orgSide by side
| Figure | Bless | GNU hexedit |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Hex Editors | 7.9 (#9) | 7.6 (#13) |
| License | Bless is distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. | The author states that hexedit is open source and may be redistributed under the GNU General Public License. |
| Purpose | Bless is a binary (hex) editor for editing files as a sequence of bytes. | GNU hexedit displays and edits files in hexadecimal and ASCII. |
Plans
In their own words
Bless
Bless is a free binary editor for editing files as sequences of bytes. It supports multilevel undo and redo, customizable data views, multiple tabs, and fast find and replace. The project highlights efficient handling of large data files and raw disk editing, with search and save operations running in multiple threads. Bless exports to text and HTML, while plugins can add other export formats and extend the editor. It is written in C# with Gtk# bindings for GTK+ and distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. GNU/Linux is the main target; listed supported platforms are Linux and Windows, and the README says it should also run on *BSD, Solaris, and Win32. Building the current version requires GTK+, a Mono/.NET runtime and C# compiler, Gtk# bindings, pkg-config, and Meson. The GitHub releases page has no releases, and the README provides source-build instructions. NEWS lists version 0.6.3 dated 2020-10-11. Saving a changed-size file under the same name requires temporary space for both files; same-size files save in place.
GNU hexedit
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.