Searching through a hex dump using regex in Vim (or elsewhere)

Question

I’m looking for a way to search for the text representation of a series of hexadecimal numbers. I search in the hex dump of a binary file that looks like so:

Answer 1

Let me propose the following mappings that take a number of hex digits from user input or visual selection, create appropriate pattern, and start a search for it.

nnoremap   x/ SearchHexBytes('/', 0)
nnoremap   x? SearchHexBytes('?', 0)
vnoremap  x/ :call SearchHexBytes('/', 1)/
vnoremap  x? :call SearchHexBytes('?', 1)?

function! SearchHexBytes(dir, vis)
    if a:vis
        let [qr, qt] = [getreg('"'), getregtype('"')]
        norm! gvy
        let s = @"
        call setreg('"', qr, qt)
    else
        call inputsave()
        let s = input(a:dir)
        call inputrestore()
    endif
    if s =~ "[^ \t0-9A-Fa-f]"
        echohl Error | echomsg 'Invalid hex digits' | echohl None
        return
    endif
    let @/ = join(split(s, '\s\+'), '\%(\s*\|\n0x\x\+:\s*\)')
    return a:dir . "\r"
endfunction