Not everyone is a programmer, and sometimes an ordinary person may need to open a file with the HEX extension to view some information in it. In fact, for such a simple task, an ordinary Notepad is quite enough – a standard application that is available in any Windows system. After all, this file, in fact, is a text file, it just contains specific information, but with ordinary symbols. HEX files have the same properties as binaries. All bytes are placed one after the other. No address information or checksums are added. The only difference with the binary format is that each byte is converted to 2 ASCII characters in the range 0-9 and AF representing 2 hexadecimal digits. These characters are grouped by line. The pair number in a string can usually range from 1 to 255, with 16 or 32 pairs being the most common length. Each line ends with a CR (ASCII value $ 0D) or CRLF (ASCII) pair. To work with such documents, a special hex-file editor program is required. It will display all the information in a convenient form and allow you to perceive and change it quite comfortably. When you reach the end of the numeric “digits”, you simply increment the number to the left by one, just like you do with decimal numbers. The number system that people use for counting is called decimal (numbers from 0 to 9), and was invented by the Persians about 6,000 years ago. In the 1950s or 1960s, IBM formalized the hexadecimal number system, which is a short way to represent binary data. Instead of using the digits 0-9, the hexadecimal number uses the digits 0 through F.

The hex file format, short for “hexadecimal” or “base-16”, is the raw data structure followed by all files stored on your computer. Although literally every document is stored in this format, it is almost impossible to find it on a PC. While not everyone knows that being able to directly modify raw bits and bytes on a PC can sometimes be very useful.

How to use notepad++ hex editor