hex editor - which is best?

[Gates Is Antichrist]

There are tons of these freeware editors. I like to work at light speed so I'm a real aficianado of the most intricate fine points, particularly single keystroke commands. Your recommendation(s)?

In particular, has anyone used both XVI32 and UE, noting need or advantage for one over the other in certain circumstances?

 

[Richard Schollar]

I've only ever used MadEdit (and not for very much) - what do you actually use a hex editor for? I know it means you can edit binary files, but for what purpose?

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

Richard, the beauty of hex editors is that - unless they have what I would consider an absurd implementation - they only change the bytes you tell them to, and don't disturb anything else. This violates the Microsoft dogma of software deciding what the user wants (since of course Microsoft knows better than the user does), but I don't normally want special characters modified, hex values blanked out, line feed sequences determined for me, Control-Zs added or removed, etc.

I can't think of all the times it comes up but off the top of my head there are in-place modifications to what are often called binary files - i.e. not-fully-text files not designed for a text editor (e.g. changing a drive letter in a header); changes to data files that contain hex control values on each record; cutting and pasting hex data; and numerous other ad-hoc circumstances.

MadEdit looks good - thanks.