How does this work? Looks like a bug in xxd for me (o.O)

mzs · on June 13, 2019

Nope xxd is fine, read the man page.

  $ PAGER='col -bx' man 5 cpio | awk '$1 == "mode" { print; while (getline) print }' | head
  mode    The mode specifies both the regular permissions and the file
          type.  It consists of several bit fields as follows:
          0170000  This masks the file type bits.
          0140000  File type value for sockets.
          0120000  File type value for symbolic links.  For symbolic links,
                   the link body is stored as file data.
          0100000  File type value for regular files.
          0060000  File type value for block special devices.
          0040000  File type value for directories.
          0020000  File type value for character special devices.
  $ echo /dev/urandom | cpio -o | dd bs=6 skip=3 count=1 | od -tc
  1 block
  1+0 records in
  1+0 records out
  6 bytes transferred in 0.000025 secs (239675 bytes/sec)
  0000000    0   2   0   6   6   6                                        
  0000006