Converting a string to binary

Question

I need some help converting a string to binary. I have to do it using my own code, not built in functions (except I can use 'ord' to get the characters into decimal).

The problem I have is that it only seems to convert the first character into binary, not all of the characters of the string. For instance, if you type "hello" it will convert the h to binary but not the whole thing.

Here's what I have so far

def convertFile():

myList = []
myList2 = []
flag = True

string = input("input a string: ")

for x in string:
    x = ord(x)

    myList.append(x)
print(myList)

for i in range(len(myList)):
    for x in myList:
        print(x)

        quotient = x / 2
        quotient = int(quotient)
        print(quotient)
        remainder = x % 2
        remainder = int(remainder)
        print(remainder)
        myList2.append(remainder)
        print(myList2)

        if int(quotient) < 1:
            pass

        else:
            x = quotient

myList2.reverse()

print ("" .join(map(str, myList2)))

convertFile()

you need to write some function `decToBin` , or `chrToBin`, and call it for each letter ... — Joran Beasley, Mar 31 '14 at 22:46
related: [Convert Binary to ASCII and vice versa (Python)](http://stackoverflow.com/q/7396849/4279) — jfs, Mar 31 '14 at 23:01

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 31 '14 at 22:58

1

If you're just wanting "hex strings", you can use the following snippet:

''.join( '%x' % ord(i) for i in input_string )

Eg. 'hello' => '68656c6c6f', where 'h' => '68' in the ascii table.

answered Mar 31 '14 at 22:58

Travis D.

342
1
9

Joran Beasley · Answer 2 · 2014-03-31T23:34:05.423

0

def dec2bin(decimal_value):
    return magic_that_converts_a_decimal_to_binary(decimal_value)

ordinal_generator =  (ord(letter) for letter in my_word) #generators are lazily evaluated
bins = [dec2bin(ordinal_value) for ordinal_value in ordinal_generator]
print bins

as an aside this is bad

for x in myList:
    ...
    x = whatever

since once it goes to x again at the top whatever you set x equal to gets tossed out and x gets assigned the next value in the list

edited Mar 31 '14 at 23:34

answered Mar 31 '14 at 22:51

Joran Beasley

110,522
12
160
179

You might mean: `''.join([dec2bin(ord(c), padding) for c in input_string])`. Though `ord(b'\xff') == 255` is not ascii. And `ord('\N{snowman}') == 9731` is not ascii (if OP uses Python 3 as hinted by `input()` function) – jfs Mar 31 '14 at 23:10

Converting a string to binary

2 Answers2