Null Characters

Text files are generally considered to be those files which do not contain null characters (ie, the character whose ASCII value is zero), and which have periodic line enders to delimit the ends of lines.  Binary or Hex files are those files which do not conform to these requirements.

As a text editor, Boxer is not able to (safely) edit Binary or Hex files.  For example, it is not possible to edit a .EXE file with the idea that you'd simply like to change some of its static message strings.  This would be a disastrous undertaking.  As a safeguard against this activity, Boxer will open .EXE files in read-only hex mode.

But there may be legitimate cases when you'd like to edit a binary file with Boxer.  You might have an otherwise 'healthy' text file that has come to contain some stray null characters within it.  Or you might be trying to salvage the readable text from an old word processing file.  To assist with projects such as these, Boxer will sense whether a file it is loading contains null characters and present the following dialog:

With this dialog you can control how null characters should be handled in the file you are loading. How you decide to proceed will depend on the type of file you're editing. It might be wise to first create a backup copy when editing files of this sort.