Which tools exists for byte-level inspection of files?

Question

I have a partially corrupted MS-Word file which I'd like to inspect in the byte-level.

Answer 1

HexEdit is pretty nice (allows you to edit files too)

Answer 2

What you need is a hex editor. Some text editors can run in this mode. I always used PSPadfor this

Answer 3

As always there's emacs, hexl-mode allows you to view and edit hex-files.

Answer 4

I like the freeware hex editor xvi32 for this kind of task.

Answer 5

I'm sure there are many, but Ultraedit does this.

Answer 6

If you have Visual Studio installed, you can add the .dat extension to the file and open it in Visual Studio to get a hex/ASCII display.

Answer 7

010 Editor is nice for looking at files that follow some template, it'll try to turn the raw data into meaningful labeled values for you.

Answer 8

Take a gander at BeyondCompare for file comparisons; version 3 has comparisons for Word files as well. You'd be surprised at how often you'll use it once you have it.