xxd is a nice little hexdump (hexadecimal dump) utility available on most Linux/Unix systems. It allows you to get a hexdump of a file or even standard input.

Hexdump the contents of the file.

Here is an example of a simply hexadecimal dump of a file:

xxd ~/.bash_profile

Since xxd basically streams a file input into a hexdump output, a huge file can result in an endless hexdump. To avoid that just pipe the output to more to add a pause to the output stream like this:

xxd ~/.bash_profile | more

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Bitdump the contents of the file.

In addition to a hexdump (hexadecimal dump), xxd can also do a bitdump (binary digits) by using the -b option like this:

xxd -b ~/.bash_profile

And you can also pipe the output to more to add a pause to the output stream like this:

xxd -b ~/.bash_profile | more

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Get cleaner a cleaner bitdump the contents of the file.

Let’s say you just want the core bitdump of a file. You can combine a bitdump of a file with head and cut to get cleaner output:

xxd -b ~/.bash_profile | head | cut -b10-62