Binary data
Binary data is information represented as sequences of bytes rather than character-oriented text.
Learn Haskell by Example
Binary encoding represents data using sequences of bits and bytes rather than textual character representations.
- How it is used
- Explains how image parsers read compact PNM bitmap, graymap, and pixmap representations.
- How deep it goes
- Descends from format distinctions to byte width, bit order, 16-bit assembly, and parser implementations.
- Examples
- Uses P4 bitmap bytes, P5 graymap values, P6 RGB values, and two-byte 16-bit samples.
- What you can do after
- Build binary PNM parsers that extract bitmap bits and read eight-bit or sixteen-bit pixel values.
The Quick Python Book, Fourth Edition
Binary data is information represented as encoded bytes rather than directly as human-readable text characters.
- How it is used
- Handles file formats and byte-oriented data when text files cannot represent the required information or interoperability needs.
- How deep it goes
- Explains bytes, binary modes, pathlib methods, and structured packing, while recommending higher-level object storage for many custom formats.
- Examples
- Uses pathlib byte I/O, encoded accented text, and C-compatible records containing an integer, float, and character sequence.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via pathlib or struct to write, read, pack, and unpack binary files.
Read how The Quick Python Book, Fourth Edition explains binary data →
Data Without Labels
Binary data has exactly two mutually exclusive possible categories or values.
- How it is used
- Classifies categorical observations whose possible outcomes are limited to two exclusive classes.
- How deep it goes
- Defines two-class categorical data and distinguishes it from nominal, ordinal, discrete, and continuous data.
- Examples
- Uses yes/no, dry/wet, hard/soft, good/bad, and true/false as paired class examples.
Modern C
Binary data is data represented as uninterpreted byte sequences rather than text characters.
- How it is used
- Uses binary streams to preserve C object bytes when reading or writing files and devices.
- How deep it goes
- Explains translation hazards, binary mode, byte counts, file positions, and error detection, but defers detailed error case analysis.
- Examples
- Demonstrates newline translation changing binary structure and identifies fread, fwrite, ftell, and fseek as the relevant interfaces.
- What you can do after
- Apply via C library interfaces to transfer binary bytes, navigate file positions, and detect incomplete operations.
Related concepts
- Base64used by · Base64 is a binary-to-text encoding scheme that represents arbitrary bytes using a fixed 64-character alphabet and provides no confidentiality.
- struct moduleused by · The struct module is a Python standard-library module for converting between Python values and packed binary data using format specifications.
- plain textincludes · Plain text is character data represented without rich formatting, markup, layout instructions, or presentation metadata.
- fwriteuses · fwrite is a C standard-library function that writes a specified number of fixed-size objects from memory to a stream.
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