bed

Binary editor written in Go

Screenshot

bed command screenshot

Motivation

I wanted to create a binary editor with Vim-like user interface, which runs in terminals, fast, and is portable.
I have always been interested in various binary formats and I wanted to create my own editor to handle them.
I also wanted to learn how a binary editor can handle large files and allow users to edit them interactively.

While creating this binary editor, I leaned a lot about programming in Go language.
I spent a lot of time writing the core logic of buffer implementation of the editor.
It was a great learning experience for me and a lot of fun.

Installation

Homebrew

sh
brew install bed

Build from source

bash
go install github.com/itchyny/bed/cmd/bed@latest

Features

Basic byte editing
Large file support
Command line interface
Window splitting
Partial writing
Text searching
Undo and redo

Commands and keyboard shortcuts

This binary editor is influenced by the Vim editor.

File operations
- :edit, :enew, :new, :vnew, :only
Current working directory
- :cd, :chdir, :pwd
Quit and save
- :quit, ZQ, :qall, :write,
  :wq, ZZ, :xit, :xall, :cquit
Window operations
- :wincmd [nohjkltbpHJKL], <C-w>[nohjkltbpHJKL]
Cursor motions
- h, j, k, l, w, b, ^, 0, $,
  <C-[fb]>, <C-[du]>, <C-[ey]>, <C-[np]>,
  G, gg, :{count}, :{count}goto, :{count}%,
  H, M, L, zt, zz, z., zb, z-,
  <TAB> (toggle focus between hex and text views)
Mode operations
- i, I, a, A, v, r, R, <ESC>
Inspect and edit
- gb (binary), gd (decimal), x (delete), X (delete backward),
  d (delete selection), y (copy selection), p, P (paste),
  < (left shift), > (right shift), <C-a> (increment), <C-x> (decrement)
Undo and redo
- :undo, u, :redo, <C-r>
Search
- /, ?, n, N, <C-c> (abort)