fq

Tool, language and format decoders for exploring binary data.

# Overview of mp3 file 
$ fq . file.mp3 
     |00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0a 0b 0c 0d 0e 0f|0123456789abcdef|.: {} file.mp3 (mp3)
0x000|49 44 33 04 00 00 00 00 15 39 54 53 53 45 00 00|ID3......9TSSE..|  headers: [1]
*    |until 0xac2.7 (2755)                           |                |
0xac0|         ff fb 40 c0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00|   ..@..........|  frames: [3]
0xad0|00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 49 6e 66 6f 00 00 00 0f|........Info....|
*    |until 0xd19.7 (end) (599)                      |                |
     |                                               |                |  footers: [0]
 
# Show ID3v2 tag in mp3 file 
$ fq '.headers[0]' file.mp3 
     |00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0a 0b 0c 0d 0e 0f|0123456789abcdef|.headers[0]: {} (id3v2)
0x000|49 44 33                                       |ID3             |  magic: "ID3" (Correct)
0x000|         04                                    |   .            |  version: 4
0x000|            00                                 |    .           |  revision: 0
0x000|               00                              |     .          |  flags: {}
0x000|                  00 00 15 39                  |      ...9      |  size: 2745
0x000|                              54 53 53 45 00 00|          TSSE..|  frames: [2]
0x010|00 0f 00 00 03 4c 61 76 66 35 38 2e 37 36 2e 31|.....Lavf58.76.1|
*    |until 0xab8.7 (2735)                           |                |
0xab0|                           00 00 00 00 00 00 00|         .......|  padding: Correct (none) (zero padding)
0xac0|00 00 00                                       |...             |
 
# Resolution of ID3v2 cover art 
$ fq '.headers[0].frames[] | select(.id == "APIC").picture.chunks[] | select(.type == "IHDR") | {width, height}' file.mp3 
{
  "height": 240,
  "width": 320
}
 
# Extract image file 
$ fq '.headers[].frames[] | select(.id == "APIC")?.picture | tobits' file.mp3 > file.png 
$ file file.png 
file.png: PNG image data, 320 x 240, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
 

Goals

• Make structured binary data accessible.
• Nested formats and bit-oriented decoding.
• Quick CLI tool that mimics jq as much as possible.
• Do bit and byte transformations and conversions.
• Programmer's calculator.

NOTE: fq is early in development and many things are missing, broken or do not make sense. That also means there is a great opportunity to help out.

Install

Download archive from releases page for your platform, unarchive and move the executable to PATH.

Homebrew

# install latest release
brew install wader/tap/fq

Build from source

Make sure you have go 1.17 or later installed.

To install directly from git repository do:

# build and install latest release
go install github.com/wader/fq@latest
# or build and install latest master
go install github.com/wader/fq@master
# copy binary to $PATH if needed
cp "$(go env GOPATH)/bin/fq" /usr/local/bin

To build and run tests from source directory:

make test fq
# copy binary to $PATH if needed
cp fq /usr/local/bin

Usage

Basic usage is:

Usage: fq [OPTIONS] [--] [EXPR] [FILE...]

For more usage details see usage.md.

Supported formats

aac_frame, adts, adts_frame, apev2, av1_ccr, av1_frame, av1_obu, avc_annexb, avc_au, avc_dcr, avc_nalu, avc_pps, avc_sei, avc_sps, bzip2, dns, elf, exif, flac, flac_frame, flac_metadatablocks, flac_picture, gif, gzip, hevc_annexb, hevc_au, hevc_dcr, hevc_nalu, icc_profile, id3v1, id3v11, id3v2, jpeg, json, matroska, mp3, mp3_frame, mp4, mpeg_asc, mpeg_es, mpeg_pes, mpeg_pes_packet, mpeg_spu, mpeg_ts, ogg, ogg_page, opus_packet, png, protobuf, protobuf_widevine, pssh_playready, raw, tar, tiff, vorbis_comment, vorbis_packet, vp8_frame, vp9_cfm, vp9_frame, vpx_ccr, wav, webp, xing

See formats for more details.

TODO and ideas

See TODO.md

Development

See dev.md

Thanks and related projects

This project would not be possible without itchyny's jq implementation gojq. Also want to thank HexFiend for inspiration and ideas and stedolan for inventing the jq language.

Similar projects:

• https://github.com/HexFiend/HexFiend
• https://github.com/binspector/binspector
• https://kaitai.io