Does there exist a program for Linux that can display raw binary data?
Each byte in my binary files represent a pixel, so it would be very useful if something like this exists where I could say
program_name --input=dat001.bin --width=200 --height=100
and it would display the pixels.
I wonder if gnuplot, can be used for this...?
convert from ImageMagick
E.g., an 8-bit 2x3 grayscale:
printf '\x00\xFF\x88\xFF\x00\xFF' > in.bin
Then:
convert -depth 8 -size 3x2+0 gray:in.bin out.png
Command explanation:
-depth 8: each color has 8 bits-size 2x3+0: 2x3 image. +0 means starting at offset 0 in the file. If there are metadata headers, you can skip them with the offset.gray:in.bin: the input file is in.bin, and the format is gray, as defined at http://www.imagemagick.org/script/formats.php This weird notation is used because ImageMagick usually determines the format from the extension, but here there is no extension.How to view such tiny outputs like this example
The problem now is how to view the such a tiny 3x2 output accurately. A direct eog:
eog out.png
is not very good because the image is too small, and if you zoom in a lot eog uses a display algorithm that mixes up pixels continuously, which is better for most pictures, but not for such a tiny image.
One good possibility is to run:
convert out.png -scale 300x out2.png
or directly in one go with:
convert -depth 8 -size 3x2+0 gray:in.bin -scale 300x out.png
-scale is needed instead of -resize, since -resize mixes pixel colors continuously up much like eog by default.
Output:
Anther option is to view it in Gimp:
gimp out.png
Image editors such as Gimp must show every single pixel separately if you zoom in enough.
RGB example
printf '\xFF\x00\x00\x00\xFF\x00\x00\x00\xFF' > in.bin
convert -depth 8 -size 3x1+0 rgb:in.bin out.png
or with the -scale to make it more viewable:
convert -depth 8 -size 3x1+0 rgb:in.bin -scale 300x out.png
Related:
Tested on Ubuntu 16.04, ImageMagick 6.8.9.
/tmp/tex1.dat), you can view the converted image directly with Imagemagick's display as 128x256 pixel image with display -depth 8 -size 128x256+0 RGBA:/tmp/tex1.dat
-endian option but it seems that it works as the -depth 16, the image is very dark
To see the "raw binary data", I would use the hex dump command hexdump†. I would use the -C option so that I could more easily see telltale ASCII text such as JFIF or PNG in case the data was not raw but a more structured form.
$ hexdump -C example.img 00000000 ff d8 ff e0 00 10 4a 46 49 46 00 01 01 01 00 48 |......JFIF.....H| 00000010 00 48 00 00 ff db 00 43 00 06 04 05 06 05 04 06 |.H.....C........| 00000020 06 05 06 07 07 06 08 0a 10 0a 0a 09 09 0a 14 0e |................| 00000030 0f 0c 10 17 14 18 18 17 14 16 16 1a 1d 25 1f 1a |.............%..| 00000040 1b 23 1c 16 16 20 2c 20 23 26 27 29 2a 29 19 1f |.#... , #&')*)..| 00000050 2d 30 2d 28 30 25 28 29 28 ff db 00 43 01 07 07 |-0-(0%()(...C...| 00000060 07 0a 08 0a 13 0a 0a 13 28 1a 16 1a 28 28 28 28 |........(...((((| 00000070 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 |((((((((((((((((| * 00000090 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 ff c0 |((((((((((((((..| 000000a0 00 11 08 00 80 00 64 03 01 22 00 02 11 01 03 11 |......d.."......| 000000b0 01 ff c4 00 1d 00 00 01 04 03 01 01 00 00 00 00 |................|
I don't know of any image format that consists of unstructured bytes - is the data 8-bit RGB values? If the file contains 30000 bytes is that RGB for 100x100 pixels or RGB for 50x200 pixels or RGB for 200x50 pixels or something else? Is there a palette? You have to know something about the organisation of the data!
To view it as an image I would use the NetPBM utilities or maybe ImageMagick to convert it to a form understood by an image viewer
If the above can't do the job I'd investigate writing a small Perl script
Footnote:
† On some older Unix systems this command might be hd or od with no hexdump command available. See unix.stackexchange.com. od is POSIX and od -Ax -tx1z filename works in some popular Linux distributions.
Okay, gnuplot can do it.
If not wanting to view it directly but rather convert it the convert utility can do this:
To read from stdin, assuming 320 x 200 pixels, 8 bit gray, header of 0, saving to pic.png in PNG format.
convert -depth 8 -size 320x200+0 gray:- pic.png
gray:- means format gray and - means from stdin. Thus the current command hangs waiting for stdin. I've explained it further on my answer: superuser.com/a/978432/128124
Sep 26, 2015 at 7:56
Raw binary data can be easily converted to binary pgm format by adding the header:
echo "P5
200 100
255
"$(cat dat001.bin) > dat001.pgm
hdto format. Then you ask to see an image. If it is an image, then it is going to be in an image format ( like bmp ) that will at the very least, have a header that identifies the format, the width, height, color depth, and maybe also have a color palette attached.