HEXBIN(1)

💖 HEXBIN 💖

okay bestie, welcome to hexbin — the Macintosh file de-binhexer, manual page HEXBIN(1), from the General Commands Manual. she's giving retro Mac energy and she is so ready to unpack your text files 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

hexbin — Macintosh file de-binhexer 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

hexbin [ - options ] [ files ]

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

so like, hexbin takes the text files you list in files — or straight-up standard input if you don't name any — and converts them, subject to whatever options you picked. that's the whole vibe. no cap. ✨

👑 OPTIONS 👑

and now the main character section 💅 if you pass no options at all, hexbin just quietly scoops up the files you named and converts them into MacBinary format, slaps a ".bin" extension on the output files, and drops them in the current working directory. silent. effortless. iconic.

• -3 — write files in fork format (the .info, .data and .rsrc files). three-for-one, we love to see it 🫶
• -f — same as -3, except empty data and rsrc files just… don't get created. if there's nothing to put in them, they don't exist. minimalism ✨
• -r — write resource forks only (.rsrc files).
• -d — write data forks only (.data files).
• -u — like -d, but the codes for CR and LF get interchanged, and the filename extension becomes .text. little swap, big difference 💀
• -U — same as -u, but with no filename extension at all. naked filename. bold.
• -a — write files in AppleShare format. 🍓 careful though: this one is only valid if the program was compiled with support for some form of AppleShare, and the current directory has to be a valid AppleShare folder. no AppleShare, no party.
• -s — write the extracted files to standard output in MacBinary format. straight to stdout, no files left behind 🌈
• -l — list every file extracted (and every directory/folder created, etc.). receipts for everything 📋
• -v — like -l, but more verbose. when you turn this on, all the lines that got skipped because they don't belong to the hexified format get listed too. (this implies -l.) it's giving full transparency 🔥
• -i — do not convert, give information only. (this implies -l.) look but don't touch energy 👀
• -c — do not check whether the hexified lines have equal size. normally hexifiers produce text files with equal length line size, and hexbin uses that as part of its heuristics to decide whether a line must be skipped. but there are hexified files that just do not conform to that pattern. if you specify this option, hexbin will in general be unable to detect whether a line is garbage or not — so you have to remove the garbage by hand. bestie, that's on you 💀
• -n name — gives the Unix base file name for the converted files. for files hexified with BinHex 4.0 or compatible hexifiers you do not need this flag; hexbin will determine the Unix file name based on the Mac file name. for files in dl, hex or hcx format though, you may need this parameter, because those formats don't include the Mac filename. normally hexbin will in those cases base the Unix file name on the text file name, but this parameter can overrule that. 💅
• -V — gives the patchlevel of the program, plus other information. other options are ignored and the program quits immediately. bye bestie 👋
• -H — give short information about the options. other options are ignored and the program quits immediately. the quick little cheat sheet 🎀

🙈 BUGS 🙈

as this is a beta release, there may still be some problems. she's still growing, okay? be nice to her 😭

🔍 SEE ALSO 🔍

macutil(1)

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Dik T. Winter, CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (dik@cwi.nl)

parts of the code are based on codes from: ahm (?), Darin Adler, Jim Budler, Dave Johnson, Dan LaLiberte, Jeff Meyer, Guido van Rossum. shoutout to the whole group chat 🫶✨

and that's the page, bestie!! this one's from the 3rd Berkeley Distribution, dated October 22, 1992 — vintage but still serving 💅 HEXBIN(1), that's a wrap 🎀💖