Question

In Python, when I try to read in an executable file with ‘rb’, instead of getting the binary values I expected (0010001 etc.), I’m getting a series of letters and symbols that I do not know what to do with.

Ex: ???}????l?S??????V?d?\?hG???8?O=(A).e??????B??$????????:    ???Z?C'???|lP@.\P?!??9KRI??{F?AB???5!qtWI??8???!ᢉ?]?zъeF?̀z??/?n??

How would I access the binary numbers of a file in Python?

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

That is the binary. They are stored as bytes, and when you print them, they are interpreted as ASCII characters.

You can use the bin() function and the ord() function to see the actual binary codes.

for value in enumerate(data):
   print bin(ord(value))