Unix History: Why does hexdump default to word alignment?

[Nadav Har'El]

On Thu, Dec 01, 2011, guy keren wrote about "Re: Unix History: Why does hexdump default to word alignment?":
> apparently, you did not use binary data serialization in the past
> two decades. when you serialize data and store it into a file (also
> on the network), it is very useful to be able to see the data as
> 2-byte or 4-byte or whatever-byte numbers, when debugging.

Well, for debugging you typically use tools like a debugger (gdb, ddd,
etc.) or network sniffer or something - and those have their own methods
of displaying data, and do not use od. So using the actual "od" command
in a shell or shell-script is not something I ended up doing in recent years.
I don't think I even noticed the "new" hexdump sibling of od cropped up
in Linux ;-)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |                   Thursday, Dec 1 2011, 
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |He who dies with the most toys is still
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |dead -- Citibank billboard, Manhattan 2001