Background & Context

- Arbitrary binary data represented as a Wolfram Language string.
- Used for importing or exporting entire raw binary data.

Import & Export

Import ["file","String"] imports a file as a raw string, representing each byte of the file as the character corresponding to FromCharacterCode [byte].
Export ["file",str,"String"] exports a Wolfram Language string of characters to a binary file. Characters with an encoding greater than 255 are converted to their ASCII representation before exporting.
The format "String" must be explicitly specified.
ExportString [expr,"format"] and Import [Export ["tmp",expr,"format"],"String" ] return the same expression.
Import ["file","String"] reads any binary file, representing its raw content as a Wolfram Language string object.
Export ["file",str,"String"] exports a Wolfram Language string to a file.
No character encoding transformations are performed when importing or exporting as "String".
Export ["file",expr,"String"] exports a textual representation of expr.
See the following reference pages for full general information:
Import , Export import from or export to a file

CloudImport , CloudExport import from or export to a cloud object

ImportString , ExportString import from or export to a string

ImportByteArray , ExportByteArray import from or export to a byte array

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Read an arbitrary binary file and return it as a raw Wolfram Language string:

Show the first bytes of the result, which contain unprintable characters:

Convert the string that represents the file "ocelot.jpg" to graphics:

Import binary data and compute an MD5 checksum:

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Introduced in 2004 (5.1) | Updated in 2007 (6.0)