A hex dump of the 318 byte Wikipedia favicon, or . Hex dump is a Hexadecimal view (on screen or a printout of Computer memory. A byte (pronounced "bite" baɪt is the basic unit of measurement of information storage in Computer science. A The first column numerates the line's starting address, while the * indicates repetition.

A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in binary form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, computer document files containing formatted text. A computer file is a block of Arbitrary Information, or resource for storing information which is available to a Computer program and is usually The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, is a Numeral system that represents numeric values using two symbols usually 0 and 1. A document file format is a text or binary file format for storing Documents on a storage media, especially for use by Computers Formatted text, styled text or rich text, as opposed to Plain text, has styling information beyond the minimum of semantic elements colours styles (boldface Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; binary files that contain only textual data - without, for example, any formatting information - are called plain text files. A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a Computer file. A text file (sometimes spelled "textfile" is a kind of Computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines. In many cases, plain text files are considered to be different from binary files because binary files are made up of more than just plain text. When downloading, a completely functional program without any installer is also often called program binary, or binaries (as opposed to the source code). In Computer science, source code (commonly just source or code) is any sequence of statements or declarations written in some Human-readable

Structure

Binary files are usually thought of as being a sequence of bytes, which means the binary digits (bits) are grouped in eights. A byte (pronounced "bite" baɪt is the basic unit of measurement of information storage in Computer science. A bit is a binary digit, taking a value of either 0 or 1 Binary digits are a basic unit of Information storage and communication Binary files typically contain bytes that are intended to be interpreted as something other than text characters. For other uses see Character. In Computer and machine-based Telecommunications terminology a character is a unit of Compiled computer programs are typical examples; indeed, compiled applications (object files) are sometimes referred to, particularly by programmers, as binaries. A compiler is a Computer program (or set of programs that translates text written in a computer language (the source language) into another In Computer science, object code, or an object file, is the representation of code that a Compiler or Assembler generates by processing But binary files can also contain images, sounds, compressed versions of other files, etc. — in short, any type of file content whatsoever.

Some binary files contain headers, blocks of metadata used by a computer program to interpret the data in the file. In Information technology, header refers to supplemental Data placed at the beginning of a block of data being stored or transmitted Metadata ( meta data, or sometimes metainformation) is "data about data" of any sort in any media Computer programs (also software programs, or just programs) are instructions for a Computer. For example, a GIF file can contain multiple images, and headers are used to identify and describe each block of image data. If a binary file does not contain any headers, it may be called a flat binary file.

Manipulation

To send binary files through certain systems (such as e-mail) that do not allow all data values, they are often translated into a plain text representation (using, for example, Base64). Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving The term Base64 refers to a specific MIME content transfer encoding. This encoding has the disadvantage of increasing the file's size by approximately 30% during the transfer, as well as requiring translation back into binary after receipt. See Binary-to-text encoding for more on this subject. A binary-to-text encoding is encoding of data in Plain text. More precisely it is an encoding of Binary data in a sequence of ASCII -printable

Microsoft Windows allows the programmer to specify a system call parameter indicating if a file is text or binary; Unix does not, and treats all files as binary. Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. In Computing, a system call is the mechanism used by an application program to request service from the Kernel. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer This reflects the fact that the distinction between the two types of files is to a certain extent arbitrary. For the concept of arbitrariness in trademark law see Trademark distinctiveness.

Viewing

A hex editor or viewer (such as hex dump) may be used to view file data as a sequence of hexadecimal (or decimal, binary or ASCII character) values for corresponding bytes of a binary file. A hex editor (or binary file editor or byte editor) is a type of Computer program that allows a user to manipulate binary (normally non-plain Hex dump is a Hexadecimal view (on screen or a printout of Computer memory.

If a binary file is opened in a text editor, each group of eight bits will typically be translated as a single character, and you will see a (probably unintelligible) display of textual characters. A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain Text files Text editors are often provided with Operating systems or software development If the file were opened in some other application, that application will have its own use for each byte: maybe the application will treat each byte as a number and output a stream of numbers between 0 and 255 — or maybe interpret the numbers in the bytes as colors and display the corresponding picture. If the file is itself treated as an executable and run, then the operating system will attempt to interpret the file as a series of instructions in its machine language. In Computing, an executable (file causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions," as opposed to a file that only contains Machine code or machine language is a system of instructions and data executed directly by a Computer 's Central processing unit.

Interpretation

Standards are very important to binary files. For example, a binary file interpreted by the ASCII character set will result in text being displayed. A custom application can interpret the file differently, a byte may be a sound, or a pixel, or even an entire word. Binary itself is meaningless, until such time as an executed algorithm defines what should be done with each bit, byte, word or block. Thus, just examining the binary and attempting to match it against known formats can lead to the wrong conclusion as to what it actually represents. This fact can be used in data hiding processes, where an algorithm interprets a binary data file differently to reveal hidden content. Without the algorithm, it is impossible to tell that hidden content exists.

See also

• Executable
• Glossary of legal terms in technology