Python Reading and writing binary [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to write individual bits to a text file in python?

I have been searching, trying to find a way to simply read and write bits to/from a file. Most of the things I have found have just showed ways to convert characters to binary. such as:

    >>> byte = 'a'
    >>> byte = ord(byte)
    >>> byte = bin(byte)
    >>> print byte
    '0b1100001'

This isn't what I want. I am looking to manipulate the actual binary in the file. I dont want to use extra modules, just standard python 2.7. Any help would be appreciated.

Yea i saw this and it seemed similar but im looking for a simpler explanation maybe and a clearer answer. — user1388345
– user1388345, Commented Aug 26, 2012 at 0:57

Ashwini Chaudhary · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-26 01:10:41Z

0

open files in binary mode, using 'r+b':

>>> f=open('data.txt','wb')
>>> f.write('abcd')
>>> f.close()
>>> f=open('data.txt','rb')
>>> [bin(ord(x)) for x in f.read(4)]        #read(4) to read 4 bytes
['0b1100001', '0b1100010', '0b1100011', '0b1100100']
>>>

edited Aug 26, 2012 at 1:10

answered Aug 26, 2012 at 0:37

Ashwini Chaudhary

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1 Comment

Ashwini Chaudhary Over a year ago

not sure about python 2.7 but in python 3.x you can do f.write(b'1100001')

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