This is an open source tool for generating a binary file described by a human readable text file. It manages endianess, several numbers representations, raw strings. It ignores comments lines, empty lines, leading and ending spaces.

It is written in C++11 standard.

It can be used as a standalone binary or as a C++ library (static or dynamic) to include to you programs.

• BinMake
  • How to install
  • How to use the binary
  • How to include in C++ code
  • Brief formatting documentation
  • Offer a coffee or a beer
  • TODO

A Makefile allow to compile the binary and the libs.

The library provides the class BS::BinStream allowing to manipulate streams.

$ git clone https://github.com/dadadel/binmake
$ cd binmake
$ make

This will compile and generate the binary binmake in bin/, the static lib libbinstream.a and the dynamic library libbinstream.so in lib/. The headers are in include/.

After compiling, the folder tree looks like:

|-- src/ <source code>
|
|-- include/
|     |-- bs_exception.h
|     |-- bs_data.h
|     |-- BinStream.h
|
|-- lib/
|     |-- libbinstream.so
|     |-- libbinstream.a
|
|-- bin/
|     |-- binmake
|
|-- test/ <unit tests>

Note that BinStream (and low-level functions) is well covered by unit tests. The used framework is Catch.

To run the tests, just launch:

$ make run-tests

$ mv bin/binmake .

$ ./binmake example.txt example.bin

$ ./binmake example.txt > example.bin

$ cat example.txt | ./binmake > example.bin

$ cat example.txt | ./binmake -o example.bin

$ echo '32 decimal 32 %x61 61' | ./binmake | hexdump -C
00000000  32 20 61 3d                                       |2 a=|
00000004

$ echo 'big-endian %f1.2345' | ./bin/binmake | hexdump -C
00000000  3f 9e 04 19                                       |?...|
00000004

• Input file example.txt:

# an example of file description of binary data to generate

# set endianess to big-endian
big-endian

# default number is hexadecimal
00112233

# man can explicit a number type: %b means binary number
%b0100110111100000

# change endianess to little-endian
little-endian

# if no explicit, use default
44556677

# bytes are not concerned by endianess
88 99 aa bb

# change default to decimal
decimal

# following number is now decimal on one byte due to its value
0123

# following number is now decimal forced to 4 bytes
0123[4]

# strings are delimited by " or '
"this is some raw string"

# explicit hexa number starts with %x
%xff

• Output fileexample.bin:

00000000  00 11 22 33 4d e0 77 66  55 44 88 99 aa bb 7b 7b  |.."3M.wfUD....{{|
00000010  00 00 00 74 68 69 73 20  69 73 20 73 6f 6d 65 20  |...this is some |
00000020  72 61 77 20 73 74 72 69  6e 67 ff                 |raw string.|
0000002b

You can either link with the static library or the dynamic library.

The header to include is BinStream.h. It needs bs_exception.h.

The class to use is BS::BinStream. You can obviously use the namespace BS to deal with merely BinStream.

You can stream the text description of you binary from: istream, ifstream, string and stringstream.

You can stream the output binary to: vector<char>, ostream and ofstream.

There follow some examples.

• Create a binary file from strings

#include <fstream>
#include "BinStream.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace BS;

int main()
{
    BinStream bin;
    bin << "'hello world!'"
            << "00112233"
            << "big-endian"
            << "00112233";
    ofstream f("test.bin");
    bin >> f;
    return 0;
}

• Create a binary file from a text file

#include <fstream>
#include "BinStream.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace BS;

int main()
{
    BinStream bin;
    ifstream inf("example.txt");
    ofstream ouf("example.bin");
    bin << inf >> ouf;
    return 0;
}

• Read from stdin and write to stdout

#include <iostream>
#include "BinStream.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace BS;

int main()
{
    BinStream bin;
    cin >> bin;
    cout << bin;
    return 0;
}

Or

#include <iostream>
#include "BinStream.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace BS;

int main()
{
    BinStream bin;
    bin << cin;
    for (size_t i = 0; i < bin.size(); ++i)
    {
        cout << bin[i];
    }
    return 0;
}

• Get the output in a char vector

#include <iostream>
#include "BinStream.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace BS;

int main()
{
    BinStream bin;
    vector<char> output;
    bin << "'hello world!'" << "00112233";
    bin >> output;
    for (size_t i = 0; i < output.size(); ++i)
    {
        cout << output.data()[i];
    }
    return 0;
}

A comment is in a single line and starts with a #. It should be the first character other than space characters.

A string should start and end by either " (double quotes) or ' (single quote) on the same line.

It is possible to set on the same line several numbers separated by spaces. There is several way to represent a number. By default a number is expected to be in hexadecimal representation unless the default representation is changed.

To force interpretation of a number representation, it should start with one of the following prefix:

• %x represents hexadecimal number (digits in [0-9a-fA-F])
• %d represents decimal number (digits in [0-9] starting optionnaly by[+-])
• %f represents float number (chars in [+-eE.0-9])
• %o represents octal number (digits in [0-7])
• %b represents binary number (digits in [0-1])

A number will be then represented as a 8 bits, 16 bits, 32 bits or 64 bits number in the binary output depending on the value of the number. If exceeding one of the above bits size it will use the next available size (max 64 bits).

As exception, if a hexadecimal number is provided with non-significant zeros, the size of the string representation will determine the output binary number size. Thus, "%x0000" (or "0000" if default is hexa) will generate a 16 bits number instead of 8 bits.

An other exception is that float numbers can only be represented on 32 bits for float or 64 bits for double (thus 4 or 8 bytes). Default float representation used if not specified is 4 bytes.

Furthermore, it is possible to force a size for a number of any type by adding the size in bytes between brackets (2, 4 or 8). For instance, the decimal number 0123 will be encoded on one byte while 0123[4] will be encoded on 4 bytes.

For the numbers represented on 16, 32 and 64 bits, the default endianess is little-endian unless it was changed (see Keywords).

Some special keywords can be used to change default endianess output usage or input not explicit number interpretation.

Note that a keyword should be on a single line without any character other than space characters.

• little-endian, big-endian

For the number represented on 16, 32 and 64 bits, the default endianess is little-endian. The default endianess can be changed by using the keyword "little-endian" or "big-endian". Once the default is changed, all further numbers will be represented in the new default endianess.

As a reminder, big-endian representation of %x00112233 is in memory 00 11 22 33, that is the less significant byte in the lower memory address. Conversly, in little-endian, the number will be represented like 33 22 11 00, that is the more significant bytes in lower addresses.

• hexadecimal, hexa, hex

If one of these keywords is found, then all furthur found number without an explicit interpretation will be interpreted as a hexadecimal number.

• decimal, dec

If one of these keywords is found, then all furthur found number without an explicit interpretation will be interpreted as a decimal number.

• octal, oct

If one of these keywords is found, then all furthur found number without an explicit interpretation will be interpreted as a octal number.

• binary, bin

If one of these keywords is found, then all furthur found number without an explicit interpretation will be interpreted as a binary number.

• float

If this keyword is found all further numbers without and explicit interpretation will be interpreted as a float number.

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• Manage several string lines