raincoats / x

a hex escaper that only escapes unprintable characters

x

a hex dumper thing that only escapes unprintable characters

x, by default, escapes characters that aren’t printable ASCII. Like:

$ cat /proc/self/environ | x
USER=root\x00LOGNAME=root\x00HOME=/root\x00

$ printf -- $'hello 😍!!\n\t—how are you?\n' | ./x
hello \xf0\x9f\x98\x8d!!
    \xe2\x80\x94how are you?

However, you can also escape specific types of characters:

• -a, escape all characters
• -t, escape tabs
• -n, escape newlines
• -r, escape carriage returns
• -s, escape spaces
• -i, escape ansi

More examples

$ echo "hello" | x -a
\x68\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f\x0a

$ echo $PS1 | x -i
%{\x1b[38;5;228m%}%c %{\x1b[38;5;203m%}%#%{\x1b[m%}

You get the idea.