creating binary file python

Question

I'm attempting to create a binary file from a python script using Python 2.7. Whenever I try converting my strings into a binary string and print it to see if it converted, it just shows the (ascii) string. Is that because print will always show the ascii equivalent and not the binary even if it is binary encoded?

EX.

my_string = "Testing binary string conversion"
bin_string = str.encode(my_string, "UTF-8")
print bin_string

What is `my_file`? Please read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). — GingerPlusPlus, Nov 14 '15 at 17:43
**my_file is a typo, I meant my_string I was expecting to see a binary string (0100010101, etc)? — Snake, Nov 14 '15 at 20:49

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

UTF-8 is a character encoding capable of encoding all possible characters, or code points, in Unicode. The encoding is variable-length and uses 8-bit code units. It was designed for backward compatibility with ASCII, and to avoid the complications of endianness and byte order marks in the alternative UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings. The name is derived from: Universal Coded Character Set + Transformation Format—8-bit.

From Wikipedia.org. And this explains why you see the same thing printed (because the unicode version is the same!), even repr should give you the same result.

To convert your string to binary you can refer to this detailed answer by Sebastian few years ago.

Hope this answer clears your doubts...

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '16 at 12:49

0

import binascii


text = "Testing binary string conversion"
byte = text.encode()
hexadecimal = binascii.hexlify(byte)
decimal = int(hexadecimal, 16)
binary = bin(decimal)[2:].zfill(8)
print("hex: %s, decimal: %s, binary: %s" % (hexadecimal, decimal, binary))

answered Apr 22 '16 at 12:49

Chigo Godwin Anyaso

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Could you explain your answer? – Zippy Apr 22 '16 at 13:06

creating binary file python

2 Answers2