I'm debugging the output of a program that transmits data via TCP.
For debugging purposes i've replaced the receiving program with netcat and hexdump:
netcat -l -p 1234 | hexdump -C
That outputs all data as a nice hexdump, almost like I want. Now the data is transmitted in fixed blocks which lengths are not multiples of 16, leading to shifted lines in the output that make spotting differences a bit difficult:
00000000 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |P...............|
00000010 00 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.P..............|
00000020 00 00 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |..P.............|
How do I reformat the output so that after 17 bytes a new line is started? It should look something like this:
50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |P...............|
00 |. |
50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |P...............|
00 |. |
50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |P...............|
00 |. |
Using hexdumps -n parameter does not work since it will exit after reaching the number of bytes. (Unless there is a way to keep the netcat programm running and seamlessly piping the next bytes to a new instance of hexdump).
Also it would be great if I could use watch -d on the output to get a highlight of changes between lines.
For hexdump without characters part.
hexdump -e '16/1 "%0.2x " "\n" 1/1 "%0.2x " "\n"'