Hecate vs wxHexEditor

Hecate is a free terminal hex editor for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It displays interpretations of byte values beneath their hexadecimal representations, including text, bit patterns, integers, and floating-point values. Users can move the cursor with Vim-like controls, edit data in place, and write changes to disk. The README also lists tabbed browsing, large-file support, full-file searches, and expressions for specifying file offsets. Interpretation options include toggling endianness and signedness, decoding dates, and configuring the date epoch. The project describes byte interpretation as useful for reverse-engineering work. Downloads are linked for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and the README provides a Go command for compiling the editor from source. Hecate is licensed under MIT. The releases page lists version 0.0.1 as the latest release; the license states that the software is provided without warranty. The repository includes usage instructions and a help screen command, but does not state a support service.

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.