correct convert string to bynary python

Question

I have a string I need to convert into a binary. I tried this:

bin = ''.join(format(ord(x), 'b') for x in strr)

But the result is the wrong length, because Python doesn't keep leading zeros. For instance instead of 01110100 it outputs 1110100.

This method:

temp = '{0:08b}'.format(frame)

doesn't work with strings.

How can I convert a string to binary correctly?

EDIT:

Sample Input: 'test'

Desired Output: '1110100011001010111001101110100'

binary view - 0 an 1. Hex view (74 65 73 74) might be unwanted in my question. — veitr, May 21 '15 at 05:21
This is not a duplicate of that, @BurhanKhalid. OP here already knows how to format as binary: the question seems to be how to format as zero-padded 8-bit strings. — Adam Smith, May 21 '15 at 05:21
@Ajay, thank you for your help, Adam Smith has already helped me. By the way, your method also has the same problem: the result of bin(74) will be '0b1001010', but the correct output is '0b01001010' — veitr, May 21 '15 at 05:28
There are [any](http://stackoverflow.com/q/18815820/113632) [number](http://stackoverflow.com/q/8553310/113632) of [existing](http://stackoverflow.com/q/11599226/113632) [questions](http://stackoverflow.com/q/7396849/113632) covering this (including the zero padding requirement). — dimo414, May 21 '15 at 06:12

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 21 '15 at 05:15

I'm not sure this is doing what you need it to do. How about this instead:

''.join("{:08b}".format(int(num, 16)) for num in strr.split())

DEMO

In [34]: strr
Out[34]: '74 65 73 74'

In [35]: ''.join("{:08b}".format(int(num, 16)) for num in strr.split())
Out[35]: '01110100011001010111001101110100'

If your text is REALLY ordinal-encoded hex, then you've got a really funky way of storing data but you could do:

''.join("{:08b}".format(ord(num)) for num in strr

DEMO

In [42]: strr
Out[42]: '74 65 73 74'

In [43]: ''.join("{:08b}".format(ord(num)) for num in strr)
Out[43]: '0011011100110100001000000011011000110101001000000011011100110011001000000011011100110100'

correct convert string to bynary python

1 Answers1