Working with Binary Data in Python

https://www.devdungeon.com/content/working-binary-data-python

Overview

• The Bytes Type
• The Bytearray Type
• Reading Bytes From a File
• Integer to Bytes
• Bytes to Integer
• Text Encoding and Decoding
• Base 64 Encoding and Decoding
• Hexadecimal
• Format Strings
• Bitwise Operations
• Struct Packing and Unpacking
• System Byte Order
• Examples
  • diff.py - Do two files match?
  • is_jpeg.py - Does the file have a JPEG binary signature?
  • read_boot_sector.py - Inspect the first 512 bytes of a file
  • find_ascii_in_binary.py - Identify ASCII characters in binary files
  • create_stego_zip_jpg.py - Hide a ZIP archive in a JPEG
  • extract_pngs.py - Extract PNGs from a file and store them in a pngs/ directory.

All examples are in Python 3.

The Bytes Type

The bytes type in Python is immutable and stores a sequence of values ranging from 0-255 (8-bits). You can get the value of a single byte by using an index like an array, but the values can not be modified.

# Create empty bytes