You can read a hex dump from a binary file into the current buffer. The following command inserts a hex dump of the file sample.bin after the line holding the cursor: :r !xxd sample.bin Lines similar to the following would be inserted into the buffer: 0000000: 0001 0203 3031 3233 0405 0607 4445 4647 ....0123....DEFG 0000010: 1011 1213 1415 1617 1819 1a1b 1c1d 1e1f ................ You can read the xxd usage text into the current Vim buffer with: :r !xxd --help