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Python 3: An interactive deep dive

Binary Files

Explore how to work with binary files in Python 3 by learning to open files in binary mode and how to read and write bytes. Understand key differences from text files, including the absence of encoding and how to use methods like read(), seek(), and tell() for precise byte-level file handling.

We'll cover the following...

Not all files contain text. Some of them contain pictures of my dog.

Python 3.5
an_image = open('beauregard.jpg', mode='rb')                                 #①
print (an_image.mode)                                                        #②
#rb
print (an_image.name)                                                        #③
#'beauregard.jpg'
print (an_image.encoding)                                                    #④
#Traceback (most recent call last):
#   File "__ed_file.py", line 8, in <module>
# print (an_image.encoding) #\u2463
#AttributeError: '_io.BufferedReader' object has no attribute 'encoding'

① Opening a file in binary mode is simple but subtle. The only difference from opening it in text mode is that the mode parameter contains a 'b' character.

② The stream object you get from opening a file in binary mode has many of ...