hachoir

About hachoir

From Debian's package description

Hachoir is a Python library used to represent of a binary file as a tree of Python objects. Each object has a type, a value, an address, etc. The goal is to be able to know the meaning of each bit in a file.

Why using slow Python code instead of fast hardcoded C code? Hachoir has many interesting features:

• Autofix: Hachoir is able to open invalid / truncated files
• Lazy: Open a file is very fast since no information is read from file, data are read and/or computed when the user ask for it
• Types: Hachoir has many predefined field types (integer, bit, string, etc.) and supports string with charset (ISO-8859-1, UTF-8, UTF-16, ...)
• Addresses and sizes are stored in bit, so flags are stored as classic fields
• Endian: You have to set endian once, and then number are converted in the right endian
• Editor: Using Hachoir representation of data, you can edit, insert, remove data and then save in a new file.

Hachoir provides command-line tools using its parsers:

• hachoir-grep: find a text pattern in a binary file
• hachoir-metadata: get metadata from binary files
• hachoir-strip: modify a file to remove metadata
• hachoir-urwid: display the content of a binary file in text mode
• hachoir-wx: display the content of a binary file in a GUI

From Debian's description of the hachoir package, under that package's license.