fx

README

🔎 Forensic Examiner

The Swiss Army Knife for examining text files. Combining the most useful functionalities from (z)cat, (z)less, head, tail, grep, hexdump, sha256sum, sha1sum, md5sum, wc and jq into one performant standalone binary.

AS THIS IS A FORENSIC TOOL NO WRITE ACTIONS WILL BE PERFORMED

Install

$ make install

Usage

$ fx [-r] [-h | -t] [-n # | -c #] [-x | -e PATTERN] [-o FILE] [PATH ... | -]

Available options:

• -r Raw output
• -h Head limit
• -t Tail limit
• -n Lines count
• -c Bytes count
• -x Hexdump mode
• -e Pattern value
• -o Evidence file

Standard options:

• --help Usage information
• --version Version number

Examples

Reading all files in the current directory:

$ fx

Reading directly from stdin:

$ fx -

Reading gzip compressed files:

$ fx foo.gz bar.gz

Reading all .jsonl files in all subdirectories:

$ fx ./*/*.jsonl

Writing all lines containing John Doe of all files to stdout:

$ fx -r -e "John Doe"

Writing the first 3 lines of foo to bar:

$ fx -h -n 3 foo > bar

Writing the last 8 bytes of foo to bar in hex:

$ fx -t -c 8 -x foo > bar

Keyboard

General

Shortcut	Action
Esc	Exit
F1 / Ctrl + l	Less mode
F2 / Ctrl + g	Grep mode
F3 / Ctrl + x	Hex mode
F4 / Ctrl + Space	Goto mode
F9	Show file(s) counts
F10	Show file(s) MD5
F11	Show file(s) SHA1
F12	Show file(s) SHA256
Tab	Load next file
Shift + Tab	Load prev file
Shift + Up	Scroll page up
Shift + Down	Scroll page down
Shift + Left	Scroll page left
Shift + Right	Scroll page right
Ctrl + Shift + Up	Scroll to start
Ctrl + Shift + Down	Scroll to end
Ctrl + r	Reload file
Ctrl + q	Close file
Ctrl + t	Cycle themes
Ctrl + f	Toggle file follow
Ctrl + n	Toggle line numbers
Ctrl + w	Toggle wrap text
Ctrl + s	Save as evidence
Ctrl + c	Copy to clipboard

Less Mode

Shortcut	Action
Space	Scroll page down

Grep Mode

Shortcut	Action
Enter	Append filter
Backspace	Delete filter
Alt + Up	Prev input in history
Alt + Down	Next input in history
Ctrl + v	Paste as input
Any Key	Filter content

Config

Located under ~/.fxrc.

Theme = "Monokai"
Follow = true  # Follow file
Line = true    # Line numbers
Wrap = true    # Wrap text

Environment

FX_THEME=Monokai

Themes

• Monokai
• Catppuccin-Latte
• Catppuccin-Frappe
• Catppuccin-Macchiato
• Catppuccin-Mocha
• Ansi
• Matrix
• Monochrome

---

Supported by codecentric opt time.