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How to open and present raw binary data in Python?

This seems to be the type of question that should have a lot of duplicates and plenty of answers, but my searches have led only to frustration and no useable solutions.

In Python (preferably 3.x), I would like to know how I can open a file of an arbitrary type, read the bytes that are stored on disk, and present those bytes in their most 'native', 'original', 'raw' form, before any encoding is done on them.

If the file is stored on disk as a stream of 00010100 10000100 ... then that's what I would like to have presented on the screen.

These sort of questions usually elicit the response 'why do you want to know' and 'what's the use case'. I'm curious, that's my use case.

Before you mark this as duplicate, please be sure that the answer you have in mind does indeed answer the question (rather than merely discuss encodings, etc.). Thank you!

EDIT AFTER FIRST THREE ANSWERS:

Thanks to the three responders up to this point, and especially to J.F. Sebastian for the extended discussion. It appears from what has been said that my question boils down to how bytes in files are physically recorded to disk and how they can be read and presented. At this point it doesn't seem possible in Python to obtain a view on to the bytes in their raw form, but they are available in various representations; integers, hex values, ascii, etc. As the matter isn't settled, I will leave the question open for more input.

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Just convert it to a list: list(b'abc') → [97, 98, 99]. You can also access every element by index b'abc'[1] → 98.

Klaus D.
– Klaus D.

2015年10月15日 14:19:04 +00:00
Commented Oct 15, 2015 at 14:19

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How to open and present raw binary data in Python?

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