[ILUG] Xemacs HEXL weirdness

[Niall O Broin]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 03:09:03AM -0500, kevin lyda wrote:

> > smilie). I've just spent a couple of hours wondering how the fsck
> > I can complete this project when the documentation I have about
> > the file format is wrong. It's a relief to discover that it's not,
> > but now I need to figure out what's wrong with my editor :-( I have
> > a gut feeling that the strangeness and the encryption thing are not
> > unconnected, but I've no idea how or why
> 
> what does file report?  perhaps /usr/share/magic is reporting it as a
> crypted file?  there are several types listed in mine.

No, file just reports it as data.

> as an alternative to emacs or vi, it might be easier to use od + less
> to view the file assuming you don't need to edit it.

I use gitview usually as a hex viewer, and khexedit is also very nice. I was
using xemacs for a very particular reason - I wanted to walk through this
file, and when I am at the start of a block, I can see how long it is, and
then do ESC xxx ^F where xxx is the length of a block. This should bring me
to the start of the next block, and so on. Actually this was how the
problem was revealed - I was looking at a short block of 10 bytes but the
length indicator was saying it was 13 bytes.


Niall