Binary & Assembly Tools

Binary inspection and Assembly highlighting for Orca, using the current Orca theme.

Binary files open directly inside Orca's editor tabs. No website, local server, or external application is required.

Open an inspection

Choose New binary inspection from the tab bar + menu, the command palette, or the plugin's Create action. The empty inspection offers compact ELF object and Static archive demonstration actions. Open an existing binary through Orca’s file editor. The plugin uses that document directly and has no separate file picker, drag-and-drop surface, title bar or status bar.

The syntax contribution's Try action in Orca creates an empty source file. For filled source examples use New Intel assembly example, New AT&T assembly example, or New ARM assembly example. These templates open in the normal Orca text editor.

Binary inspection

• A single metadata line shows format, architecture, file size and any image size declared by load headers. Sections lists file and memory sizes separately. Archive files open directly to their members; ELF/PE/COFF files open to available symbols, otherwise sections or hex. Unavailable sections of the navigation are hidden.
• Symbols searches and sorts available ELF, COFF and PE names, addresses, bindings, visibility and declared sizes. Function/data/import/export filters select metadata actually present in the file. Names remain as recorded, including C++ mangled names; no external tools run.
• Archive objects lists AR members, including GNU and BSD long names. Inspect a member, then use the archive breadcrumb to return to its previous table state. Index and name-table members are marked as metadata.
• Hex shows synchronized bytes and ASCII, an optional data inspector, explicit hex/text search and decimal or 0x offset navigation. Hex queries accept both 7F454C46 and 7F 45 4C 46. Arrow keys move the selected byte when the byte view is focused; Home/End move within a row and Ctrl/Cmd+Home/End move to the first/last file byte. The accessible byte grid exposes file offsets, hex/decimal values and selection for screen readers and computer-use agents. Search shows up to 100,000 matches with an explicit limit notice; narrow the query if this limit is reached.
• Strings extracts UTF-8 strings of at least four characters. Filtering and cursor-based page scans keep every extracted string accessible without retaining the whole result set. Very long strings have a marked 4,096-character preview; View bytes opens the complete range.

Supported structural analysis: ELF32/ELF64, little/big endian, ELF symbol tables and load headers; PE32/PE32+ sections/imports/exports; ordinary COFF objects; GNU/BSD AR archives. Mach-O and unknown formats remain available as hex and strings. Thin archives cannot inspect external members. Unsupported metadata variants produce a notice while preserving the byte view.

File sizes are limited to 64 MiB, matching Orca's document bridge limit. Larger documents are rejected rather than silently truncated. Search and string extraction yield between chunks and cancel when the inspected document changes.

Memory sizes describe headers and sections, not process RAM usage. Relocatable object files and archives have no declared loaded image size. Missing symbol sizes are shown as —, not estimated from neighboring addresses; zero-filled sections have no file bytes to jump to. Stripped files can have no symbols. PE imports/exports often provide names without sizes. Raw section and symbol values remain distinguishable from mapped file offsets.

The inspector only reads bytes. It does not edit or execute the inspected program. Opening a demo changes the inspection view, not the contents of the Orca document behind it.

Appearance

The binary tables, hex/ASCII view, strings and inspector share a code-editor font stack and full-size text: Fira Code with Cascadia Mono/Consolas fallbacks, 14 px regular type and 19 px line spacing. These match the editor preferences used for this release; Orca's current frame API exposes theme colors but does not expose the user's live editor font settings. Changing Orca's font later does not automatically update this plugin. No font files are bundled.

Hex row geometry follows its computed line height, and columns use character-relative widths. Narrow views scroll rather than shrinking the data text. Theme colors continue to update through Orca's frame tokens.

Assembly syntax

• x86/x86-64 Intel and AT&T: .asm, .inc.
• ARM/AArch64: .arm, .a64.
• GNU Assembly: .s, including numeric ARM immediates such as #1 and GNU preprocessor directives. GAS accepts several architectures; this generic grammar does not infer the target CPU.

Validation

Run the parser and search regression suite with:

npm ci --ignore-scripts
npm test

The parser/search suite is accompanied by DOM tests that execute the actual UI module with a mocked Orca document session. They check default panes, empty state, archive/member/back state, document replacement, search and the absence of duplicate application chrome. Native acceptance also checks both Orca theme modes, narrow panels and keyboard navigation.

License

MIT