executable name sucks

[m4b]

Current Candidate(s)

• bingrep (no rename)
• binocular
• bing

---

bg cannot be used without path prefix because of bg for job backgrounding in bash/posix.

so we need to choose a better one. i'm thinking two letters (lets jump on the grep shortname bandwagon renaissance we're in the middle of).

Some candidates:

0. binocular
1. binlens
2. od (ObjDump)
3. ng (biNGrep)
4. ig (bInGrep)
5. bd (BinDump)
6. bing (BINGrep)
7. bgrep

Or also any other name :P

[IWriteThings]

I would like to recommend 'bing' (binGrep) for no other reason than the obvious.

[m4b]

This is clearly and obviously the best name currently suggested. Thank you 💃

[m4b]

On the other hand, I don't want to awaken the beast of Redmond and have them lock up the bingrep repo in piles of cease and desist orders for years to come... 🤔

[saghm]

Not sure if it's taboo to ask this, but is there a reason that bingrep itself isn't in consideration? I know that shorter names are generally considered more valuable, but I think that a) seven letters isn't really that long, especially given tab completion b) users can always make an alias if they find they're needing to save a few keystrokes c) there's a much lower change of collision in naming (like what was run into with bg and d) users are less likely to forget what the correct command is if they don't use this very often (whereas options 1-4 are things that I'd personally never remember).

Obviously, I'm not a stakeholder in this in any way, and I'm honestly not sure how often I'd need to use this (very awesome!) tool given the type of things that I work on, but I thought it might be worth putting in my two cents since this is still an open question.

[ryancnelson]

"od" has been a Unix program name for literally decades : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Od_(Unix)

[rjtobin]

As per the Hacker News discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14530054), "less" seems like a better analogy than "grep" (since this utility does not search).

"binless" was suggested over there.

[m4b]

@saghm No worries, there's no taboos here :) I think I'm actually in agreement you; also bingrep isn't like ag or rg or whatever that you use it very frequently.

@ryancnelson lol whoops; so clearly i'm great at selecting names which already exist

@rjtobin hehe I like binless too actually, and yes it's more like less I suppose. Really it's like a colorized objdump

[liotev]

The name "bingrep" and the description ("like grep but for binaries") are a bit misleading (this tool is not like grep, in that it does not search for a pattern). The name "binless" would not be precise too, because "less" pages the output, while "bingrep" does not. May be "bincat" would be best, because it is more like "cat" for binaries.

[madnight]

It doesn't really seem like grep to me. grep takes 2 inputs: a text and a search string. bingrep only takes one input, a binary. Without a search string it's hard to really say this is like grep.
It seems similar to objdump but with somewhat differing information and with coloring.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14530054

suggestion: do not name it grep

[Foorack]

I agree with that it should not be called grep if it does not work the same way. Bincat sounds good to me. 😀

[liotev]

On second thoughts, the man page for 'cat' says that it 'concatenates files', besides printing them out to the standard output, while 'bingrep' works with one file only. So may be 'bincat' would not be the best name either.

[madnight]

bindump
binocular
binge

[adarqui]

If you go the "binary cat" route, I suggest "bat". Then you can have a nice bat (mammal) logo, of a bat in the dark using it's sonar to highlight things in its (binary) environment. Or maybe a bat hanging upside down with special rust goggles on, with "binary cat highlighted output" seen in the reflection. 8|

peace

[Rurik]

binxray
binparse
binocular +1