347:, each group of eight bits will typically be translated as a single character, and the user will see a (probably unintelligible) display of textual characters. If the file is opened in some other application, that application will have its own use for each byte: maybe the application will treat each byte as a number and output a stream of numbers between 0 and 255—or maybe interpret the numbers in the bytes as colors and display the corresponding picture. Other type of viewers (called 'word extractors') simply replace the unprintable characters with spaces revealing only the human-readable text. This type of view is useful for a quick inspection of a binary file in order to find passwords in games, find hidden text in non-text files and recover corrupted documents. It can even be used to inspect suspicious files (software) for unwanted effects. For example, the user would see any URL/email to which the suspected software may attempt to connect in order to upload unapproved data (to steal). If the file is itself treated as an
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39:
296:). Encoding the data has the disadvantage of increasing the file size during the transfer (for example, using Base64 will increase the file's size by approximately 30%), as well as requiring translation back into binary after receipt. The increased size may be countered by lower-level link compression, as the resulting text data will have about as much less
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A text file may consist partly or entirely of encoded binary information. When sending binary files over the network they may be encoded so that they use only printable characters. This is often necessary due to the limitations of network protocols used for internet browsing and e-mail communication.
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programming languages allow the programmer to specify a parameter indicating if a file is expected to be plain text or binary when opening a file; this affects the standard library calls to read and write from the file in that the system converts between the C/C++ "end of line" character (the ASCII
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Standards are very important to binary files. For example, a binary file interpreted by the ASCII character set will result in text being displayed. A custom application can interpret the file differently: a byte may be a sound, or a pixel, or even an entire word. Binary itself is meaningless,
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systems, the C and C++ standard libraries on those systems also allow the programmer to specify whether a file is expected to be text or binary, but the libraries can and do ignore that parameter, as the end-of-line sequence in Unix-like systems is just the C/C++ end-of-line character.
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until such time as an executed algorithm defines what should be done with each bit, byte, word or block. Thus, just examining the binary and attempting to match it against known formats can lead to the wrong conclusion as to what it actually represents. This fact can be used in
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that are binary compatible, which means that a file produced in a
Windows environment is interchangeable with a file produced on a Macintosh. This avoids many of the conversion problems caused by importing and exporting data.
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The term is used most commonly to state that data files produced by one application are exactly the same as data files produced by another application. For example, some software companies produce applications for
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file can contain multiple images, and headers are used to identify and describe each block of image data. The leading bytes of the header would contain text like
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Two files that are binary compatible will have the same sequence of zeros and ones in the data portion of the file. The file header, however, may be different.
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or viewer may be used to view file data as a sequence of hexadecimal (or decimal, binary or ASCII character) values for corresponding bytes of a binary file.
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as it has increased size, so the actual data transferred in this scenario would likely be very close to the size of the original binary data. See
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computer programs are typical examples; indeed, compiled applications are sometimes referred to, particularly by programmers, as
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files, contain the text of the document but also contain formatting information in binary form.
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linefeed character) and the end-of-line sequence
Windows expects in files (the ASCII
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of the computer. Some computers store the bytes in a file in a different order.
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One possible binary compatibility issue between different computers is the
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file. If a binary file does not contain any headers, it may be called a
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contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some
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to interpret the data in the file. The header often contains a
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Binary files are usually thought of as being a sequence of
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Non-human-readable computer file encoded in binary form
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To send binary files through certain systems (such as
26:".bin" redirects here. For the CD image format, see
63:. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
19:"binaries" redirects here. For double stars, see
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244:which can identify the format. For example, a
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323:and linefeed characters in sequence). In
123:Learn how and when to remove this message
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512:"NCL: Reading binary data"
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183:computer document files
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161:indicates repetition.
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278:website certificates
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420:Binary large object
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68:Find sources:
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944:File sharing
917:File manager
907:File copying
754:Organisation
699:8.3 filename
653:Sidecar file
631:Magic number
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524:. Retrieved
520:the original
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495:. Retrieved
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425:Disassembler
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55:Please help
50:verification
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783:File system
668:System file
658:Sparse file
616:File format
602:Binary file
378:binary code
345:text editor
185:containing
167:binary file
143:of the 318
21:Binary star
890:Management
815:Operations
766:NTFS links
687:Properties
526:2017-10-12
497:2017-10-12
466:2017-10-12
441:References
430:Executable
408:endianness
349:executable
338:hex editor
232:used by a
211:characters
189:, such as
147:Knowledge
113:April 2013
83:newspapers
28:Disk image
859:Hard link
740:File size
663:Swap file
611:Data file
606:text file
400:Macintosh
325:Unix-like
276:(such as
197:Structure
175:text file
971:Category
864:Shortcut
694:Filename
648:Metafile
550:binaries
414:See also
398:and the
230:metadata
219:binaries
215:Compiled
141:hex dump
847:Linking
396:Windows
332:Viewing
298:entropy
226:headers
149:favicon
97:scholar
897:Backup
874:Shadow
294:Base64
270:Base64
254:GIF89a
250:GIF87a
242:number
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869:Alias
838:Write
828:Close
595:Types
290:email
240:magic
203:bytes
169:is a
151:, or
104:JSTOR
90:books
833:Read
823:Open
805:Path
376:For
314:and
207:bits
145:byte
76:news
316:C++
258:GIF
252:or
246:GIF
59:by
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