Finding a zero byte in a binary file

dgj · Post by **dgj** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 8:57 pm

This is more of a bug report than feature request.

It seems that the find dialog doesn't quite work when used with a binary file. If you open a binary file, select Search | Find, and select Hex, the find feature will only work for non-zero bytes. For example, searching for "4F28" will find those bytes if they exist, but searching for "440023" will match the first occurrence of "44", ignoring the "0023".

TextPad is probably treating the 00 as a null terminator, but I need to search for strings of bytes with "00" in them. Is there another way to do this?

Thanks,
..Dustin

talleyrand · Post by **talleyrand** » Wed Oct 15, 2003 1:32 am

Alas, TP could use a bit of beefing up in the binary file editing arena although I do believe I have seen somewhere in the documentation where it notes that it cannot handle the NULL character. I have found XVI to be an excellent, free, binary file editor.

rcourtois · Post by **rcourtois** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:51 pm

In the past I have tried to search for just 00 using the hex search. This results in TextPad hanging and having to be killed. It seems like TextPad converts the hex codes to a string and then calls the regular search routine. There should probably be a different search routine for hex, since when searching a binary file a byte value off 00 is just as significant as 01-ff.