How to Read and Convert a Binary File to CSV in Python?

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To read a binary file, use the open('rb') function within a context manager (with keyword) and read its content into a string variable using f.readlines(). You can then convert the string to a CSV using various approaches such as the csv module.

Here’s an example to read the binary file 'my_file.man' into your Python script:

with open('my_file.man', 'rb') as f:
    content = f.readlines()
    print(content)

Per default, Python’s built-in open() function opens a text file. If you want to open a binary file, you need to add the 'b' character to the optional mode string argument.

  • To open a file for reading in binary format, use mode='rb'.
  • To open a file for writing in binary format, use mode='rb'.

Now that the content is in your Python script, you can convert it to a CSV using the various methods outlined in this article:

🌍 Learn More: Convert a String to CSV in Python

After you’ve converted the data to the comma-separated values (CSV) format demanded by your application, you can write the string to a file using either the print() function with file argument or the standard file.write() approach.