Special files

You can use HexEditor with special files (special in the UNIX sense, as a disk device). Depending on the file you want to open, you will need the appropriate privileges that may even require you log in as root (su or sudo not sufficent).

Opening special files

It is not possible to browse the file system to open special files, as you would to open regular ones. Because of this limitation, an Open Special command is provided under the File menu. Once the Open Special panel appears, you can type in the absolute path (for example, /dev/disk0) to the file you want to open.

Note that there is a limitation when handling special files: their size is not known. Because of this, we force the size to be constant; that is 256 KB and that means you are not able to see its contents farther than that. You can change that limit using the following command:

defaults write com.raphaelsebbe.hexeditor SpecialFileSize 512 (for a 512 bytes file size)