Python ASCII to binary

Question

Is there a builtin function that converts ASCII to binary?

For example. converts 'P' to 01010000.

I'm using Python 2.6.6

Answer 1

How about two together?

bin(ord('P'))
# 0b1010000

• Cripto: What does the 0b mean at the start of it
• Devon M: @Steve that is actually unusable binary, its only 7 characters, "P" is 01010000 but that code is removing the leading 0, outputting only 1010000 which is only 7 characters and therefore unusable
• Geremia: @Cripto 0b means the number is expressed in binary (base 2). 0x would mean hexadecimal (base 16).
• Geremia: @DevonM Leading zeros don't matter.

Answer 2

Do you want to convert bytes or characters? There's a difference.

If you want bytes, then you can use

# Python 2.x
' '.join(bin(ord(x))[2:].zfill(8) for x in u'שלום, עולם!'.encode('UTF-8'))
# Python 3.x
' '.join(bin(x)[2:].zfill(8) for x in 'שלום, עולם!'.encode('UTF-8'))

The bin function converts an integer to binary. The [2:] strips the leading 0b. The .zfill(8) pads each byte to 8 bits.

Answer 3

bin(reduce(lambda x, y: 256*x+y, (ord(c) for c in "Hello world"), 0))

this is for multiple characters