Quick Tutorial
This tutorial will explain all commands which behaves different to vi. Note that, if you are on a Linux system, you will probably have an 'improved' version of vi. Bvi is more similar to the standard version.
The Screen
000000 00000C 000018 000024 000030 00003C 000048 000054 000060 00006C 000078 000084 000090 00009C | 7F 45 4C 46 01 01 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 34 00 0C 00 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 89 53 C7 45 A4 00 00 00 00 00 83 7D 08 8C 02 00 00 E9 6F 00 00 00 00 6A 03 45 08 50 E8 FC FF 0C 85 D2 75 17 6A E9 43 02 00 00 8D 0C 85 D2 75 0D C7 | 01 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 0C 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 E5 83 EC 68 57 56 00 00 C7 45 A0 01 00 75 13 6A 00 E8 02 00 00 8D B4 26 68 90 00 00 00 8B FF FF 89 C2 83 C4 01 E8 60 02 00 00 74 26 00 8D BC 27 45 A0 00 00 00 00 | .ELF........ ............ ............ ....4.....(. ............ ....U....hWV S.E......E.. ....}..u.j.. .....o.....& ....j.h..... E.P......... ...u.j..`... .C....t&...' ...u..E..... |
| "set.o" 3500 bytes | 000001 \105 0x45 69 'E' | ||
The screen is divided into four areas, symbolized by four different
colors (only on this page, bvi uses NO colors). The magenta area contents the addresses in hexadecimal
notation. The green area contents the values of the edited file in
hexadecimal notation. The red area contents the same bytes in ASCII
representation. The yellow status line displays on the left side the
current status messages and on the right site the current position
of the cursor and the value of the byte on this address in octal,
hexadecimal, decimal and ASCII notation.
You can toggle between the Hex and ASCII value of the same byte by
pressing the TAB key both in command
and input mode.
Command Line Options
There are some additional command line options in bvi:-f scriptThis command provides a means for collecting a series of ex (colon) commands into a script file, then using this file to edit other files. Since there is no binary stream editor bsed, you can use this option to make several global changes in a binary file. You can do this of course with the source command (:so file) from within bvi too.
-s skipThis option causes bvi to load a file not from start but from offset skip.
-e endThis option causes bvi to load a file not till end but till address end.
-n lengthThis option causes bvi not to load the complete file but only length bytes. This option can also be used to read a file reported with a length 0 like some files in the Linux /proc directory.
skip, end or length can be an integer value (decimal or hexadecimal) or an integer value with an appended k (for multiply by 1024) or m (for multiply by 1.048.576).
You should use at most two of the three address options to avoid ambiguity!
Not yet implemented commands
- :map and :unmap (Macros)
- :abbreviate (:ab) and :una
- no named buffers.
Back to the top
Page updated: October 12th 2019 by Gerhard Bürgmann, Purkersdorf/Austria
Have a look at "webmaster.puon.at"