[SUMMARY] Hex Editing

Thanks to the many responses - emacs was frequently recommended as the
tool to use (in vip mode if you don't want to learn emacs).

Also vim includes xxd, allowing you to convert the hex to and from a dump format

In the specific case of wtmpx, the following tools and links were most helpful:

/usr/lib/acct/fwtmp [-ic]
/usr/lib/acct/wtmpfix [file...]

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-0211/6m6nc66rf?a=view
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-4074/6jd68pq02?a=view

Dedicated editors were also recommended, including:

bvi -  bvi.sourceforge.net
bed (binary editor) - ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume1/

Other suggestions were to use strings, and od:

Two useful options:
-x
to dump bytes as hex rather than octal
-c
to print the ascii representation for byte values 0-127.

The general feeling was that few of the built-in editors will make
sense of a binary file - they don't generally know how to handle bytes
with the high bit set (128 to 255, or -128 to -1 in "signed speak").

Thanks very much for the detailed and quick responses.

Steve Nelson
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