What is the real difference between binary files and text__ 🤔.mp3
Differentiate formats, encodings and impacts in the practice of reading, writing and software interoperability.
1) Basic concepts: what is binary vs text
In this article I explain the difference between binary and text files. In technical terms, the central difference is in the representation: binary files store data as byte series without a direct-to-human read convention, while text files represent information such as encoded strings. A file with a .bin extension can contain anything from images to compressed tables, while a text file can store only readable information, as long as there is an encoding that converts bytes into characters.
Important: The file extension does not define its content; She is just a convention. An audio with .mp3 extension is, in practice, a binary file that uses MP3 audio encoding, not text. The relationship between the two worlds arises when we think of coding and I/O operations.
2) Representation of data and encodings
Binary refers to how to store data as bytes. Text depends on a character encoding, commonly UTF-8, UTF-16, or older encodings like ASCII. The same textual content can take up less or more space depending on the encoding:
- Simple text in ASCII/UTF-8 without accents usually uses 1 byte per character.
- Accented characters can require 2 or more bytes in UTF-8.
- In UTF-16, many characters can occupy 2 bytes, with the possibility of surprises for supplementary characters.
Practical Consequence: If you read a file as text, the system needs to decode the bytes into characters; Read how binary gets the pure bytes and demands that the code handles the decoding explicitly.
3) Reading/writing, performance and interoperability
I/O operations differ when dealing with binaries vs text. In many languages, opening a file in text mode may imply:
- encoding conversion when reading bytes to characters;
- Standardization of new lines according to platform conventions (LF vs CRLF);
- automatic treatment of line terminations; and
- Possible decoding error checking, which can interrupt flows if the content does not comply with the declared encoding.
Binary avoids this cost of decoding and normalization, but requires the developer to manage data structures, cross-platform compatibility, and read/write operations with the exact format of the content.
4) Practical cases and recommendations
Choose binary when:
- You are dealing with images, audio, videos, compressed tables or data structures of your own;
- I/O performance and exact bit preservation is crucial;
- Interoperability with other applications supports standardized binary formats.
Choose text when:
- You need readability, diff versioning, or manual editing;
- Interoperability between systems with clear encoding is desirable;
- Compatibility with text tools (GREP, editors, scanners) is required.
Note: Files can have binary content encapsulated in one text format, such as Base64, or be containers with multiple segments. The decision should consider the workflow, available tools, and data integrity requirements.
Practical example: Read file in binary vs text (python)
The example illustrates how different reading modes affect the result and the way you process the data.
# Suppose there is the file "data.txt" containing text with accents.
# Reading as text (auto decoding)
with open("data.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
text = f.read()
print(type(text), len(text))
print(text[:80])
# Reading as binary (pure bytes)
with open("data.txt", "rb") as f:
raw = f.read()
print(type(raw), len(raw))
print(raw[:80])
# Note:
# Text is a string with already decoded characters;
# RAW is a sequence of bytes that you can manually decode with a specific encoding if necessary.
Tips: Always declare encoding when opening in text mode; In crossed environments, validate the expected encoding to avoid decoding errors.
Want to delve even deeper?
This post is just the beginning. Check out more technical content at YuriDeVeloper to master the practice of data manipulation, file formats, data structures and reading/writing patterns in real projects.
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