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Reading and Writing Binary Files in Python

Introduction
Setting Up Your Python Environment
Installing Python and PyCharm IDE Creating and Running Your First Python Program
Python Data Types
Numeric Types String Types Boolean Types None Type
Operators and Expressions
Arithmetic Operators Comparison Operators Logical Operators Bitwise Operators Assignment Operators Operator Precedence
Control Flow Statements
Conditional Statements Loops Break and Continue Statements Exception Handling
Functions and Modules
Defining and Calling Functions Function Arguments and Return Values Lambda Functions Modules and Packages
Python Data Structures
Lists Tuples Dictionaries Sets Arrays
ObjectOriented Programming in Python
Classes and Objects Attributes and Methods Inheritance and Polymorphism Abstract Classes and Interfaces
File Handling
Opening and Closing Files Reading and Writing Text Files Reading and Writing Binary Files CSV Files
Regular Expressions
Basic Regular Expressions and Metacharacters Anchors and Quantifiers Grouping and Capturing Lookarounds
Datetime and Timezones
Date and Time Objects Date and Time Formatting Timezone and Daylight Saving Time Handling
Debugging and Testing
Debugging Techniques Debugging Tools in PyCharm Unit Testing with PyTest
Web Scraping with Python
Requesting Data with urllib Parsing HTML with Beautiful Soup Extracting and Storing Data
Database Handling with Python
Connecting to Databases Performing CRUD Operations Database Access with ORM (ObjectRelational Mapping)
Introduction to Data Science with Python
NumPy Pandas Matplotlib ScikitLearn
GUI Programming with Python
Creating GUI Applications GUI Toolkits (Tkinter, PyQt, wxWidgets)
Network Programming with Python
Socket Programming Creating and Running a Simple Web Server Connecting to APIs
Best Practices and Tips
Python Coding Standards Code Organization Writing Efficient Code Tips and Tricks for Python Development
Conclusion and Next Steps.

Reading and Writing Binary Files

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When we talk about reading and writing binary files in Python, we refer to the way in which the data is stored in the file. Binary files contain data that is encoded in binary code - a series of 0s and 1s that represent bits of information.

To read binary files in Python, we can use the open() function with the mode set to "rb" (read binary). This will return a file object that we can read from using methods such as read(), readline(), or readlines().

For example, to read a binary file called "example.bin":

 
                    
with open("example.bin", "rb") as f:
    data = f.read()

To write binary files in Python, we can use the open() function with the mode set to "wb" (write binary). This will return a file object that we can write to using methods such as write(), writelines(), or seek().

For example, to write binary data to a file called "output.bin":

 
                    
with open("output.bin", "wb") as f:
    f.write(b"\x48\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f\x20\x57\x6f\x72\x6c\x64")

In the above example, we are writing the ASCII values for "Hello World" to the file in binary format. Note that the b before the string indicates that it is a bytes object.

It is important to note that binary files can be system-dependent, so make sure to specify the correct encoding and endianness when reading or writing data. Endianness refers to the order in which bytes are stored in memory - little-endian means that the least significant byte is stored first, while big-endian means that the most significant byte is stored first.

March 25, 2023

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