gohex

Description

Command gohex creates static file imports for Go. Use gohex [file] for embedding static assets in Go like you would for C with xxd -i [file].

Installation

This package can be installed with the go get command:

go get github.com/wamuir/gohex

This command line tool outputs a Go file containing a byte slice, analogous to a static C array as might generated by hex dumping a file using xxd with the -i (include) flag. An intended use of this tool is to allow for the inclusion of a static file (or multiple static files) within a compiled Go binary. This is meant to be a straightforward solution for use simple cases: no frills, file systems, compression or configuration. gohex is also quite fast and dumps about 35 percent faster than xxd.

Usage and command line flags

Usage of gohex:
        gohex [flags] [infile [outfile]]
Flags:
  -c int
        number of columns to format per line (default 10)
  -h    print this summary
  -i int
        number of tabs to indent the byte slice (default 1)
  -p string
        name for Go package, or empty for none (default "main")
  -s    output byte slice without declarations
  -v string
        name for Go variable of the byte slice (default "gohex")

Example

A simple example – converting echoed text to a Go static file

Within a unix shell:

$ printf "Hello, hexadecimal world!" | gohex
package main

var gohex = []byte{
      0x48, 0x65, 0x6c, 0x6c, 0x6f, 0x2c, 0x20, 0x68, 0x65, 0x78,
      0x61, 0x64, 0x65, 0x63, 0x69, 0x6d, 0x61, 0x6c, 0x20, 0x77,
      0x6f, 0x72, 0x6c, 0x64, 0x21,
}

If the output was stored as a .go file, the variable could then be accessed:

fmt.Printf("%s", string(gohex))

Which would yield:

Hello, hexadecimal world!