Hexdump reverse command

Question

The hexdump command converts any file to hex values. But what if I have hex values and I want to reverse the process, is this possible?

Accepted Answer

There is a similar tool called `xxd`. If you run `xxd` with just a file name it dumps the data in a fairly standard hex dump format:

```
# xxd bdata
0000000: 0001 0203 0405
......
```

Now if you pipe the output back to `xxd` with the `-r` option and redirect that to a new file, you can convert the hex dump back to binary:

```
# xxd bdata | xxd -r >bdata2
# cmp bdata bdata2
# xxd bdata2
0000000: 0001 0203 0405
```

Solution