PythonServer Side ProgrammingProgramming
Beyond Basic Programming - Intermediate Python
Most Popular
36 Lectures 3 hours
Mohammad Nauman
More Detail
Practical Machine Learning using Python
Best Seller
91 Lectures 23.5 hours
MANAS DASGUPTA
More Detail
Practical Data Science using Python
22 Lectures 6 hours
MANAS DASGUPTA
More Detail
"Binary" files are any files where the format isn't made up of readable characters. Binary files can range from image files like JPEGs or GIFs, audio files like MP3s or binary document formats like Word or PDF. In Python, files are opened in text mode by default. To open files in binary mode, when specifying a mode, add 'b' to it.
For example
f = open['my_file.mp3', 'rb'] file_content = f.read[] f.close[]Above code opens my_file.mp3 in binary read mode and stores the file content in file_content variable.
Manogna
Updated on 12-Dec-2019 07:00:11
- Related Questions & Answers
- How to open a binary file in append mode with Python?
- How to open a binary file in read and write mode with Python?
- How to open a file in append mode with Python?
- How to open a file in read and write mode with Python?
- How to open a file to write in Python?
- How to open a file just to read in python?
- How to change the mode of a file using Python?
- How can I open a VDS file with three js?
- How to get the current open file line in Python?
- How to open a file in the same directory as a Python script?
- How to open a plain text file in C#?
- How to open a plain text file in Java?
- How to open any file with its default application with PowerShell?
- How to open browser window in incognito/private mode using python selenium webdriver?
- How to write binary data to a file using Python?
Previous Page Print Page Next Page
Advertisements
The insertion and extraction operators [i.e. > are meant to be used by programs for writing to and reading from text files; it is assumed that the programmer is familiar with the differences between these two file formats.
In reality there are dozens of extensions with little documentation of ordinary text streams. An additional section will be added to this document at a later time.
Before any operation can take place on a file, it of course must be opened, and when you are finished with the file, it should be closed to avoid loss of data.
open member function also provides for a couple of optional arguments that are not often described. The most general prototype of this function is void open[const char *filename[, int mode][, int prot]]; The format that I've used indicates that the mode and prot arguments are optional.
The first argument is always the name of the file on the disk that the stream will be attached to. The const modifier is included so that a programmer can write the name of the file [inside double quotes] in the function call. The only tricky part about using the open member function is under DOS based systems [includes Windows] in which directories are separated by a \; recall that the backslash character has a special meaning in C++ strings.
The prot parameter is used to specify the protection [permission] of the file under multiuser operating systems such as Unix. It allows you to specify which users are allowed to look at this file. Under DOS/Windows, this parameter is never used. The mode parameter is usually left out when dealing with text files, but there are some very useful situations under binary files for which this parameter must be set. There are a number of options that can be given for this parameter. If you need to specify more than one of them simply place a vertical bar between them.
- ios::in This indicates that the stream will be used for input. This may seem redundant for ifstreams which are automatically marked for input when they are opened, but it has to be used occasionally. When you call open with no second parameter, the parameter is assumed to be ios::in but if you give any other parameter such as ios::binary you will need to specify that the file is an input file as well.
- ios::out This indicates that the stream will be used for output. Like ios::in this may seem redundant for ofstreams but for the same reason as above, it usually has to be given.
- ios::ate This causes the file pointer to point at the end of the file when the file is opened.
- ios::trunc This causes the all the existing data in the file to be discarded [erased] when the file is opened. Be very careful not to use this option on a file you do not want destroyed!
- ios::binary This causes the file to be accessed as a binary file. Most likely you will need to set this option. If you forget to set this option, many strange problems will occur when reading certain characters like `end of line' and `end of file'.