hexl-mode doesn't seem to allow me to create a binary file. Steps: 1. Open Emacs 2. Create a new file using C-x C-f /tmp/boot-sect.bin 3. M-x hexl-mode 4. M-x hexl-insert-hex-char 5. e 6. Nothing is written into the buffer and the message buffer says "Point is not on a character file". I took a brief look at the source code and it appears that (hexl-current-address) expected the cursor to not be in the top left (0,0) location of the buffer. Normally in hexl-mode those columns are going to be occupied by addresses. Yet, that's exactly where the cursor is because that's an empty file. I tried on my two Macs and on a Linux box too. It works as expected if I do "echo 0 > /tmp/boot-sect.bin" first so that the file isn't empty. Cheers, Igor ----- In GNU Emacs 27.1 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin18.7.0, NS appkit-1671.60 Version 10.14.6 (Build 18G95)) of 2020-08-11 built on builder10-14.porkrind.org Windowing system distributor 'Apple', version 10.3.1894 System Description: Mac OS X 10.15.6 Recent messages: Loading paren...done [yas] Prepared just-in-time loading of snippets successfully. Loading server...done Users/igor/.emacs.d/elpa/justify-kp/justify-kp.el: ‘flet’ is an obsolete macro (as of 24.3); use either ‘cl-flet’ or ‘cl-letf’. [2 times] Key Chord mode on For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. Package cl is deprecated (New file) hexl-current-address: Point is not on a character in the file Configured using: 'configure --with-ns '--enable-locallisppath=/Library/Application Support/Emacs/${version}/site-lisp:/Library/Application Support/Emacs/site-lisp' --with-modules' Configured features: NOTIFY KQUEUE ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS NS MODULES THREADS JSON PDUMPER Important settings: value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: Hexl Minor modes in effect: ruler-mode: t hl-line-mode: t hexl-follow-ascii: t hexl-follow-ascii-mode: t global-emojify-mode: t emojify-mode: t global-undo-tree-mode: t undo-tree-mode: t evil-mode: t evil-local-mode: t keyfreq-autosave-mode: t keyfreq-mode: t winum-mode: t pyvenv-mode: t shell-dirtrack-mode: t window-number-meta-mode: t window-number-mode: t global-linum-mode: t linum-mode: t global-auto-revert-mode: t ido-everywhere: t show-paren-mode: t display-time-mode: t tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t column-number-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. 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