I want to make a method that takes any file and reads it as an array of 0s and 1s, i.e. its binary code. I want to save that binary code as a text file. Can you help me? Thanks.
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- 1Your question is unclear. What exactly should the two files look like?SLaks– SLaks2010-03-11 15:29:42 +00:00Commented Mar 11, 2010 at 15:29
- 1I think he wants to store the bit pattern of a file into a text file.Oded– Oded2010-03-11 15:32:30 +00:00Commented Mar 11, 2010 at 15:32
- 1Is the source file binary or encoded (textual, either as ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, etc)? In other words, if you open the file in a text editor like Notepad, do you see zeros and ones?Pat– Pat2010-03-11 15:55:01 +00:00Commented Mar 11, 2010 at 15:55
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5 Answers
Quick and dirty version:
byte[] fileBytes = File.ReadAllBytes(inputFilename); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); foreach(byte b in fileBytes) { sb.Append(Convert.ToString(b, 2).PadLeft(8, '0')); } File.WriteAllText(outputFilename, sb.ToString()); 
1 Comment
Chris Doggett
@Andrey: See "quick and dirty". Obviously, in production, something using file streams would be much better. The important part is converting from bytes to binary strings.
Well, reading it isn't hard, just use FileStream to read a byte[]. Converting it to text isn't really generally possible or meaningful unless you convert the 1's and 0's to hex. That's easy to do with the BitConverter.ToString(byte[]) overload. You'd generally want to dump 16 or 32 bytes in each line. You could use Encoding.ASCII.GetString() to try to convert the bytes to characters. A sample program that does this:
using System; using System.IO; using System.Text; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { // Read the file into <bits> var fs = new FileStream(@"c:\temp\test.bin", FileMode.Open); var len = (int)fs.Length; var bits = new byte[len]; fs.Read(bits, 0, len); // Dump 16 bytes per line for (int ix = 0; ix < len; ix += 16) { var cnt = Math.Min(16, len - ix); var line = new byte[cnt]; Array.Copy(bits, ix, line, 0, cnt); // Write address + hex + ascii Console.Write("{0:X6} ", ix); Console.Write(BitConverter.ToString(line)); Console.Write(" "); // Convert non-ascii characters to . for (int jx = 0; jx < cnt; ++jx) if (line[jx] < 0x20 || line[jx] > 0x7f) line[jx] = (byte)'.'; Console.WriteLine(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(line)); } Console.ReadLine(); } } 3 Comments
Boris
Thank you for your answer. Hmmm.. something doesn't seem to work, as I'm not getting the 0s and 1s. Instead, I am getting the same effect as if I would chose to open a file in notepad.
Hans Passant
Yes you do, they are encoded in hex. Not the same thing you'd see in notepad. Backgrounder: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal
shawn
This method reads the file, can you provide a method that writes the binary to the file or writes the binary data to the file then converts to hex to read back the way you have it here?
You can use BinaryReader to read each of the bytes, then use BitConverter.ToString(byte[]) to find out how each is represented in binary.
You can then use this representation and write it to a file.
Comments
using (FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(binarySourceFile.Path)) using (BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(fs)) { // Read in all pairs. while (reader.BaseStream.Position != reader.BaseStream.Length) { Item item = new Item(); item.UniqueId = reader.ReadString(); item.StringUnique = reader.ReadString(); result.Add(item); } } return result; 
Comments
Use simple FileStream.Read then print it with Convert.ToString(b, 2)
