Binary to ASCII in Python

Question

I'm trying to decode binary which are located in a .txt file, but I'm stuck. I don't see any possibilities this can go around.

def code(): testestest
 ascii = {'01000001':'A', ...}
 binary = {'A':'01000001', ...}
 print (ascii, binary)
 def encode():
 pass
 def decode(code,n):
 f = open(code, mode='rb') # Open a file with filename <code>
 while True:
 chunk = f.read(n) # Read n characters at time from an open file
 if chunk == '': # This is one way to check for the End Of File in Python 
 break
 if chunk != '\n':
 # Process it????
 pass

How can I take the binary in the .txt file and output it as ASCII?

• Musa: Oh, yeah :-) I'm sorry. Is there any easy way the binary from the .txt file be outputted to ASCII?
• tglaria: What's your input? What's the expected output? This sound more easy than you're making it look.
• jblixr: Your answer is here. Just modify it according to your need.
• furas: can't you use int("01000001', 2) to convert into integer and then chr(65) to get char ?
• Open AI - Opting Out: You can convert between binary, ascii, and strings using bin, int, and chr.

Answer 1

From your example, your input looks like a string of a binary formatted number.

If so, you don't need a dictionnary for that:

def byte_to_char(input):
 return chr(int(input, base=2))

---

Using the data you gave in the comments, you have to split your binary string into bytes.

input ='01010100011010000110100101110011001000000110100101110011001000000110101001110101011100110111010000100000011000010010000001110100011001010111001101110100001000000011000100110000001110100011000100110000'
length = 8
input_l = [input[i:i+length] for i in range(0,len(input),length)]

And then, per byte, you convert it into a char:

input_c = [chr(int(c,base=2)) for c in input_l]
print ''.join(input_c)

Putting it all together:

def string_decode(input, length=8):
 input_l = [input[i:i+length] for i in range(0,len(input),length)]
 return ''.join([chr(int(c,base=2)) for c in input_l])
decode(input)
>'This is just a test 10:10'

• Musa: Thanks, but I think there need to be a dictionary for holding the mapping between binary string and ascii chars? This is the binary: 01010100011010000110100101110011001000000110100101110011001000000110101001110101011100110111010000100000011000010010000001110100011001010111001101110100001000000011000100110000001110100011000100110000
• tglaria: Is that a question? No, you don't need it. you convert your binary string into an integer and then convert that integer into ascii.
• Musa: Thanks, but the binary string is in an external file in a folder as mentioned.
• tglaria: So? just load that string.
• Musa: So in it will be... def code(): bin = int('0b110100001100101011011000110110001101111', 2) pass