How do I compare binary files in Linux?

Question

I need to compare two binary files and get output in form

for every different byte. So if file1.bin is

  00 90 00 11

in binary form

and file2.bin is

  00 91 00 10

I want to get something like

  00000001 90 91
  00000003 11 10

what is the easiest way to accomplish the goal? Standard tool? Some 3rd party tool?

Note: cmp -l should be killed with fire, it uses a decimal system for offsets and octal for bytes.

Answer 1

This will print the offset and bytes in hex:

cmp -l file1.bin file2.bin | awk '{printf "%08X %02X %02X\n", $1, strtonum(0$2), strtonum(0$3)}'

Answer 2

as ~quack (hehe) pointed out:

 % xxd b1 > b1.hex
 % xxd b2 > b2.hex

and then

 % diff b1.hex b2.hex

or

 % vimdiff b1.hex b2.hex 

Answer 3

There's a tool call DHEX which may do the job.

And there's another tool called VBinDiff

For a strictly command-line approach, try JDIFF

Answer 4

May not strictly answer the question, but I use this for diffing binaries:

gvim -d <(xxd -c 1 ~/file1.bin | awk '{print $2, $3}') <(xxd -c 1 ~/file2.bin | awk '{print $2, $3}')

It prints both files out as hex and ascii values, one byte per line, and then uses vim's diff facility to render them visually.

Answer 5

There is another one that I like, it's named Beyond Compare. You can find it here:

http://www.scootersoftware.com/moreinfo.php?zz=moreinfo_compare