Is it possible to run patterns from command line?

[pshirshov]

It would be awesome if we can run patterns as standalone CLI scripts against files and stdin, that would save us a lot of effort in many cases. Although can't figure out if that's possible. Is it?

[WerWolv]

ImHex has a command line interface that you can use. Run imhex --help to see what's available. The sub command you're looking for is imhex --pl. There's also a standalone cli for the Pattern Language itself, without any ImHex stuff that you can build yourself from the library sources.

[pshirshov]

Indeed it works, thank you.

Although it loves to crash randomly (at least, on ARM Macs):

Like it might literally fail in 50% of the time while being invoked on the same input file. Also, it always finishes parsing and prints the output and then shows this nasty dialog in the end.

Also, it seems like it doesn't support stdin, am I right?

[msm-code]

You can read data from stdin just fine:

$ echo a | imhex --pl format --pattern f --input /dev/stdin --output tt
Wrote pattern data to tt

for some reason this doesn't work with patterns:

$ echo "u8 a @ 1;" | imhex --pl format --pattern /dev/stdin --input /etc/passwd --output tt1
fish: Process 1946761, 'imhex' from job 1, 'echo "u8 a @ 1;" | imhex --pl f…' terminated by signal SIGABRT (Abort)