[Techtalk] emacs for binary editing (was copy file headers...)

[Akkana]

Hamster writes:
> In that case my suggestion just flew south for the winter. I'm not
> sure what you could do with binary format data short of using some hex
> editor to copy and paste the required info. 

>From subsequent postings it sounds like head/tail/cat will solve the
problem, but I just wanted to mention here that emacs works surprisingly
well for editing binary files (in case you're like me and never got
around to installing a hex editor for a problem that only crops up
once in a while).  

I needed to chop off some dead space at the end of a sound file a while
back, and after failing to find a sound editing app, I used xemacs and
it worked. :-)  (A few weeks later I found out about Wave Surfer, a
nifty little sound editor that works fine.)

Of course, if you have emacs set to automatically add a newline at
the end of the file or other text-specific stuff, you should turn
that off when editing binaries.

	...Akkana