bin2const

bin2const is a simple command line tool to convert arbitrary files into constant declarations in your favourite programming language.

Description and usage

You give this a file (sound, image, binary, whatever) and this marvel of modern technology will give you a constant declaration in your favourite programming language.

What does that mean? Say I wanted to load a sound in my rust program without having to load it from a file at run-time, I could simply run the command :

bin2const sound.wav SOUND rust 4 sound.rs

to get the following output in sound.rs

const SOUND: [u8; 1234] = [
    0x52, 0x49, 0x46, 0x46,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 ];

Then, I would just have to make the constant public, import the constant, and I could use it in my program.

Installation

Run compile_and_set_path.bat on Windows and install.sh on Linux.

You can also run cargo build --release and add it to your PATH manually.

Why ?

Because sometimes you want to load your files without suffering file IO, or you want to reduce the size of your resources with compile time optimizations, or even you want to hide your files from the user.

Why not ?

There are multiple reasons not to but the most notable for me are:

• The file with the constant declaration is oftentimes 5x larger than the original file (although it can be reduced with the)
• Decreases maintainability
• Decreases convenience, you need to rerun the command every time you change the file you want to convert. For example, it's an issue if you want to use this for a game, and you want to change the sprites often

Sharp edges

• The tab_size argument doesn't work with most languages
• The tool is not very well tested, so it might not work as expected. Please report any issues you encounter.

Usage

bin2const <input_file> <output_const_name> <conversion_type> [tab_size] [output_file]

<input_file>        The file to convert.
<output_const_name> The name of the constant to generate. Has no effect if the conversion type
                    is bin or hex.
<conversion_type>   The type of conversion to use. Can be hex, bin, c, cdef, rust, csharp, python, javascript.
                    as well as most of their aliases.
[tab_size]          The size of a tabulation in the output file. Per default is 4.
[output_file]       Optional output file, if not specified, the output will be printed to stdout.

conversion_type parameter

"hex" | "hexadecimal" | "hexa" | "hexa-decimal" | "hexa_decimal"

This converts a file into hexadecimal disassembly, example:

00000000  2f 74 61 72  67 65 74 0a  2f 2e 69 64  65 61 0a 2f   |/target./.idea./|
00000010  2e 76 73 63  6f 64 65                                |.vscode         |

"bin" | "binary"

This converts a file into binary disassembly, example:

00000000  00101111 01110100 01100001 01110010  01100111 01100101 01110100 00001010  |/target./.idea./|
00000010  00101111 00101110 01101001 01100100  01100101 01100001 00001010 00101110  |.vscode         |

"c" | "cpp" | "c++" | "cxx" | "h" | "hpp" | "h++" | "hxx"

This converts a file into a C array, example:

const unsigned char TARGET[] = {
    0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 };

"cdef" | "c-def" | "c_def" | "def" | "define" | "cppdef"

This converts a file into a C/C++ multiline #define, example:

#define TARGET_SIZE 1234
#define TARGET {0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72, /* [All the other bytes...] */ }

"rust" | "rs" | "rustlang" | "rust-lang

This converts a file into a Rust const [u8] array, example:

const TARGET: [u8; 1234] = [
    0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 ];

"csharp" | "cs" | "c#" | "c-sharp" | "c_sharp"

This converts a file into a C# byte[] array, example:

public static readonly byte[] TARGET = new byte[] {
    0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 };

"python" | "py" | "python3" | "py3" | "python_3" => {

This converts a file into a Python bytes array, example:

TARGET = bytes([
    0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 ])

"javascript" | "js" | "typescript" | "ts"

This converts a file into a Javascript Uint8Array, example:

const TARGET = new Uint8Array([
    0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 ]);

"go" | "golang" | "go-lang" | "go_lang"

This converts a file into a Go []byte, example:

var TARGET = []byte{
    0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 };

"java" | "java8" | "java-8" | "java_8"

This converts a file into a Java byte[], example:

public static final byte[] TARGET = new byte[] {
    0x2f, 0x74, 0x61, 0x72,
    /* [All the other bytes...] */
 };