Kaitai Struct
Shares rank 3 of 7 parser libraries by recommenders
People recommend it for describing binary file formats and generating parsers in several languages, with a web IDE for testing definitions against hex dumps.
People recommend it for describing binary file formats and generating parsers in several languages, with a web IDE for testing definitions against hex dumps.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Generates parsers in several languages
“It has a web-based IDE for writing and testing structure definitions against hex dumps, and can generate binary parsers”
Comment from 29 Jun 2026 in “Dissecting Apple's Sparse Image Format (ASIF)” “Kaitai Struct is also pretty good and will generate code in several languages.”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Reverse Engineering Unknown File Formats with ImHex” Flexible, good starting point to learn
“It seems like a fairly flexible system that would be an excellent starting point”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Your hex editor should color-code bytes” “a fascinating tool which I'm going to have to dive into and learn”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Go is portable, until it isn't”
Other parser libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other parser libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tree-sitter | 79 | 15 | 84% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Hardwood Parquet parser | 7 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
| Kaitai StructThis page | 6 | 2 | 75% | 5 | — | — |
| Lark parser library for Python | 6 | 1 | 86% | 5 | — | — |
| Ohm parsing library | 6 | 3 | 67% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it looks more limited than the imhex format”
“Kaitai Struct is also pretty good and will generate code in several languages.”
“you can put in placeholder fields between two known objects, but that's kind of annoying”
“I use both ImHex and Kaitai struct, give it a try maybe you'll like it”
“It has a web-based IDE for writing and testing structure definitions against hex dumps, and can generate binary parsers”
“Kaitai Struct or something similar would broadly have prevented these.”
“It seems like a fairly flexible system that would be an excellent starting point”
“a fascinating tool which I'm going to have to dive into and learn”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.