Currently, there is only limited support for inspecting the contents of MemorySegments. Adding the capability of providing commonly used and human-readable formats of MemorySegments is likely to lower the threshold for new users and increase the understanding of the FFM API.

It would be helpful to be able to view the raw content of a MemorySegment using a mechanism like this:

MemorySegment memorySegment = memorySession.allocate(64 + 4);
memorySegment.setUtf8String(0, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog\nSecond line\t:here");
hexStream(memorySegment)
    .forEach(System.out::println);


this might produce the following output:

0000000000000000 54 68 65 20 71 75 69 63 6B 20 62 72 6F 77 6E 20 |The quick brown |
0000000000000010 66 6F 78 20 6A 75 6D 70 65 64 20 6F 76 65 72 20 |fox jumped over |
0000000000000020 74 68 65 20 6C 61 7A 79 20 64 6F 67 0A 53 65 63 |the lazy dog.Sec|
0000000000000030 6F 6E 64 20 6C 69 6E 65 09 3A 68 65 72 65 00 00 |ond line.:here..|
0000000000000040 00 00 00 00 |....|

Another desirable feature would be to be able to view a MemorySegment using a "lens" in the shape of a MemoryLayout:

var pointLayout = MemoryLayout.structLayout(
        ValueLayout.JAVA_INT.withName("x"),
        ValueLayout.JAVA_INT.withName("y")
).withName("Point");

var view = view(segment, pointLayout);

view would now contain:

Point {
    x=1,
    y=2
}

Views should support layouts of arbitrary depth and structure.