Editing Binary file (section)

== Viewing ==

A [[hex editor]] or viewer may be used to view file data as a sequence of hexadecimal (or decimal, binary or ASCII character) values for corresponding bytes of a binary file.<ref name=":1" />

If a binary file is opened in a [[text editor]], each group of eight bits will typically be translated as a single character, and the user will see a (probably unintelligible) display of textual characters. If the file is opened in some other application, that application will have its own use for each byte: maybe the application will treat each byte as a number and output a stream of numbers between 0 and 255—or maybe interpret the numbers in the bytes as colors and display the corresponding picture. Other type of viewers (called 'word extractors') simply replace the unprintable characters with spaces revealing only the human-readable text. This type of view is useful for a quick inspection of a binary file in order to find passwords in games, find hidden text in non-text files and recover corrupted documents.<ref name=":1" /> It can even be used to inspect suspicious files (software) for unwanted effects. For example, the user would see any URL/email to which the suspected software may attempt to connect in order to upload unapproved data (to steal). If the file is itself treated as an [[executable]] and run, then the operating system will attempt to interpret the file as a series of instructions in its [[machine language]].