Jose E. Marchesi
jemarch.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2020
Jose E. Marchesi, a GNU developer, writes about GNU poke, an editor for structured binary data, and about ALGOL 68.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend GNU poke for editing binary data and repetitive tasks, and link his ALGOL 68 jargon page.
20HN people shared it
12linked it in comments
14stories submitted
270story points
8 months agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1GNU poke: an extensible editor for structured binary data15 people · 47 points · first shared 2020 · 2 comments on HN
- 2GNU poke: The extensible editor for structured binary data2 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 3GNU poke 1.01 people · 196 points · first shared 2021 · 38 comments on HN
- 4Applied Pokology – GNU poke development news1 people · 10 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 5GNU Poke 4.1 Released1 people · 4 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Release notes for GNU poke 2.01 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 7Learn the Poke language in Y minutes1 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 8Padding and aligning data in GNU poke1 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 9Supporting Hyperlinks in Console Applications1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 10Poke-elf: an ELF pickle for GNU poke1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 11A68 jargon1 people · first shared 2026
What HN people wrote when they linked it
pmcgoron · 2026-03-02
If you want to peer into an alternative reality / funhouse mirror of programming terms, you should look at ALGOL 68. For instance, types are called "modes".
https://jemarch.net/a68-jargon/
(There are also "incestuous unions", which is the actual term used in the spec.)
mnabipoor · 2024-05-31
I am happy to announce a new release of GNU poke, version 4.1.
This is a bugfix release in the 4.x series.
See the file NEWS in the distribution tarball for a list of issues fixed in this release.
The tarball poke-4.1.tar.gz is now available at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/poke/poke-4.1.tar.gz.
> GNU poke (http://www.jemarch.net/poke) is an interactive, extensible editor for binary data. Not limited to editing basic entities such as bits and bytes, it provides a full-fledged procedural, interactive programming language designed to describe data structures and to operate on them.
Thanks to the people who contributed with code and/or documentation to this release.
Happy poking!
mharig · 2024-05-21
Just want to draw your attention to GNU poke, which might be a better solution for repetitive tasks.
http://www.jemarch.net/poke.html
nyberg · 2023-06-03
http://www.jemarch.net/poke might be interesting in that case.
alex14fr · 2022-09-05
I never used it but GNU poke http://www.jemarch.net/poke seems like what you're looking for.
catern · 2022-03-26
I've long looked for something like this for my day job, which involves implementing many different custom binary network protocols.
One new project in this space is poke:
http://www.jemarch.net/poke
It can describe arbitrary formats for both reading and writing, and it's usable programmatically, so I think it can solve the problem!
pabs3 · 2022-03-18
I like GNU poke for futzing with binary data.
http://www.jemarch.net/poke
The poke and other folks had an online conference recently called Binary Tools Summit:
https://binary-tools.net/summit
gspr · 2021-05-05
I haven't gotten my hands dirty with it myself yet, but Poke looks super interesting!
https://www.jemarch.net/poke
https://media.ccc.de/v/ASG2019-127-gnu-poke-an-extensible-editor-for-s…
Actually, it sounds like a fun weekend task to redo this GeoTIFF writeup in Poke :-)
cxr · 2020-06-14
There's also "poke" which is actively developed by a hacker on GDB and GCC:
http://www.jemarch.net/poke
https://kernel-recipes.org/en/2019/talks/gnu-poke-an-extensible-editor…
bombolo · 2023-06-03
What about GNU Poke? http://www.jemarch.net/poke
manish_gill · 2022-03-26
zx2c4 · 2021-12-23
Relatedly, check out GNU Poke: http://www.jemarch.net/poke