Python Made Easy

Reading a Binary File

First we need to open the file in read binary mode. Make sure the file exists first.

my_file = open(“data.dat”, “rb”)

To read the data, we can use the read() method. The read() method is used to read a specified number of bytes from a file or the entire content if no size is specified. It returns a byte object in binary mode containing the data.

content = my_file.read()

print(content)

Using the read() method you can also specify the number of bytes to read. The following example will read the first 4 bytes of the file.

binary_data = file.read(4)

You can also use the readline() method. The readline() method is used to read a single line from a file. It returns a byte object in binary mode representing the line.

line = my_file.readline() ...