Reading a raw binary data in python and converting it into ascii

Question

I have a raw binary data and I want to convert it into a readable text.

the text contains with something that is not readable, it has also special characters, like black box with NUL word or " N–[«´N–[« )› )ÿ " . I'm just new in python.

here's my code

import struct
file = open('rawbinary.txt')
text = file.read()
struct.unpack("iiiii", text[:20])

my output was:

(2113933569, 67305475, -80477197, 1536577129, 1312228259)

and if add this:

text[:10]

my output is

'\x01\x11\x00~\x03\x00\x03\x04\xf3\x03'

Am I doing it right? What is my next step?

what's your OS, you should open the file with 'rb' on windows (linux does not need the binary differentiation). — Mike McMahon
– Mike McMahon, Commented Oct 21, 2013 at 3:56
can you gist/fiddle/pastebin...etc your rawbinary.txt file, what do you expect to see? your format string is 'iiii' which means format as integer. docs.python.org/2/library/struct.html (also, change to open('rawbinary.txt', 'rb') for consistent behavior on windows) — Mike McMahon
– Mike McMahon, Commented Oct 21, 2013 at 4:06

mpenkov · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-21 05:28:46Z

5

Use the built-in ord function.

with open("/bin/ls", "rb") as fin:
  buf = fin.read()
bytes = map(ord, buf)    
print bytes[:10]

output:

[127, 69, 76, 70, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]

answered Oct 21, 2013 at 5:28

mpenkov

22k11 gold badges94 silver badges129 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

Vincent Over a year ago

can this be outputted into ascii?

Vincent Over a year ago

i mean. into letters.

mpenkov Over a year ago

No. Some of the byte codes (e.g. anything less than 65) correspond to symbols that are not letters.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Reading a raw binary data in python and converting it into ascii

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related