View Byte Data

Use the Data Viewer tool to examine data files at the byte level, which allows you to view file structure, identify unknown file types, and determine the offset to data when an embedded image header is present in the data.

1. From the Toolbox, select Raster Management > Data Viewer.
2. Select an input file. The Data Viewer dialog appears, displaying the filename and number of total bytes in the title bar and the actual data values (in hexadecimal format, by default).
• The first column lists the byte count (the starting byte of the listed row).
• The next 16 columns (for hexadecimal and byte data) list the values for 16 bytes of data.
• The final column lists the ASCII equivalent of the values.

Note: If the data does not have any embedded ASCII characters, the ASCII equivalents are random. If there is embedded ASCII data, the data is readable as text.

3. To select the starting byte to view from the file, enter the byte number in the File Offset Byte(s) field.
4. To move the data view forward or backward one page respectively, click the Next Page and Prev Page buttons.
5. If you suspect that the data may be in something other than byte format, select View_Format from the Data Viewer menu bar and select a data format (Hexadecimal, Byte, Unsigned Integer, Integer, Long Integer, Unsigned Long Integer, or Floating Point). The number of columns of data values and the representation of the listed data change accordingly.
6. To open and view a different file, select File > Open New File from the Data Viewer menu bar.
7. To exit the data viewer, select File > Cancel from the Data Viewer menu bar.
8. To evaluate the swapping of bytes between Intel and IEEE formats for data types with more than one byte per value (integer, long integer, and floating point), select Byte_Swap from the Data Viewer menu bar and select one of the following:
• None: No swapping
• Short Word: Swapping two bytes for an integer
• Long Word: Swapping byte pairs for long integer and floating-point data