Question

I just finished a computer organization course, in which we learned that all files and data are stored in the form of 0’s and 1’s (bits). However, I’m curious how a programmer can actually access a file’s binary representation? That is, how can I see (or access) the 0’s and 1’s that represent any file on my computer?

Answer 1

While it’s true that at the most basic level, everything is stored as bits, most processors these days only allow you to access bytes (8 bit blocks). From a byte, however, you can figure out if a bit is one or not.

To get the value of a bit in position pos (from least significant bit, 0, to most significant bit, 7) of byte byte, you could use this code (in C, here, but it’s likely valid in many languages):

// bit here is likely 32 bits, but it will only contain 0 or 1,
// based on the value of the bit at pos in byte
int bit=(byte>>pos)&1;