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Format-Hex

  • Reference
Module:
Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility

Displays a file or other input as hexadecimal.

Syntax

Format-Hex
      [-Path] <string[]>
      [<CommonParameters>]
Format-Hex
      -LiteralPath <string[]>
      [<CommonParameters>]
Format-Hex
      -InputObject <Object>
      [-Encoding <string>]
      [<CommonParameters>]

Description

The Format-Hex cmdlet displays a file or other input as hexadecimal values. To determine the offset of a character from the output, add the number at the leftmost of the row to the number at the top of the column for that character.

The Format-Hex cmdlet can help you determine the file type of a corrupted file or a file that might not have a filename extension. You can run this cmdlet, and then read the hexadecimal output to get file information.

When using Format-Hex on a file, the cmdlet ignores newline characters and returns the entire contents of a file in one string with the newline characters preserved.

Examples

Example 1: Get the hexadecimal representation of a string

This command returns the hexadecimal values of a string.

'Hello World' | Format-Hex

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000   48 65 6C 6C 6F 20 57 6F 72 6C 64                 Hello World

The string Hello World is sent down the pipeline to the Format-Hex cmdlet. The hexadecimal output from Format-Hex shows the values of each character in the string.

Example 2: Find a file type from hexadecimal output

This example uses the hexadecimal output to determine the file type. The cmdlet displays the file's full path and the hexadecimal values.

To test the following command, make a copy of an existing PDF file on your local computer and rename the copied file to File.t7f.

Format-Hex -Path .\File.t7f

Path: C:\Test\File.t7f

           00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000   25 50 44 46 2D 31 2E 35 0D 0A 25 B5 B5 B5 B5 0D  %PDF-1.5..%????.
00000010   0A 31 20 30 20 6F 62 6A 0D 0A 3C 3C 2F 54 79 70  .1 0 obj..<</Typ
00000020   65 2F 43 61 74 61 6C 6F 67 2F 50 61 67 65 73 20  e/Catalog/Pages

The Format-Hex cmdlet uses the Path parameter to specify a filename in the current directory, File.t7f. The file extension .t7f is uncommon, but the hexadecimal output %PDF shows that it is a PDF file.

Parameters

-Encoding

Specifies the encoding of the output. This only applies to [string] input. The parameter has no effect on numeric types. The default value is ASCII.

The acceptable values for this parameter are as follows:

  • ASCII Uses ASCII (7-bit) character set.
  • BigEndianUnicode Uses UTF-16 with the big-endian byte order.
  • Unicode Uses UTF-16 with the little-endian byte order.
  • UTF7 Uses UTF-7.
  • UTF8 Uses UTF-8.
  • UTF32 Uses UTF-32 with the little-endian byte order.

Non-ASCII characters in the input are output as literal ? characters resulting in a loss of information.

Type:String
Accepted values:ASCII, BigEndianUnicode, Unicode, UTF7, UTF8, UTF32
Position:Named
Default value:ASCII
Required:False
Accept pipeline input:False
Accept wildcard characters:False

-InputObject

Used for pipeline input. Pipeline input supports only [string] and [system.io.fileinfo] instances for piping from Get-ChildItem.

Type:Object
Position:Named
Default value:None
Required:True
Accept pipeline input:True
Accept wildcard characters:False

-LiteralPath

Specifies the complete path to a file. The value of LiteralPath is used exactly as it is typed. This parameter does not accept wildcard characters. To specify multiple paths to files, separate the paths with a comma. If the LiteralPath parameter includes escape characters, enclose the path in single quotation marks. PowerShell does not interpret any characters in a single quoted string as escape sequences. For more information, see about_Quoting_Rules.

Type:String[]
Aliases:PSPath
Position:Named
Default value:None
Required:True
Accept pipeline input:False
Accept wildcard characters:False

-Path

Specifies the path to files. Use a dot (.) to specify the current location. The wildcard character (*) is accepted and can be used to specify all the items in a location. If the Path parameter includes escape characters, enclose the path in single quotation marks. To specify multiple paths to files, separate the paths with a comma.

Type:String[]
Position:0
Default value:None
Required:True
Accept pipeline input:False
Accept wildcard characters:True

Inputs

String

You can pipe a string to this cmdlet.

Outputs

ByteCollection

This cmdlet returns a ByteCollection. This object represents a collection of bytes. It includes methods that convert the collection of bytes to a string formatted like each line of output returned by Format-Hex. If you specify the Path or LiteralPath parameter, the object also contains the path of the file that contains each byte.

Notes

The right-most column of output tries to render the bytes as characters:

Generally, each byte is interpreted as a Unicode code point, which means that:

  • Printable ASCII characters are always rendered correctly
  • Multi-byte UTF-8 characters never render correctly
  • UTF-16 characters render correctly only if their high-order byte happens be NUL.