The core of reading a binary file is to open the file using 'rb' mode and read as a bytes object. 1. Use with open('file.bin', 'rb') to read the entire file to the bytes object; 2. For large files, chunked reading is adopted, and byte blocks of fixed size are read each time to save memory; 3. If you need to parse structured data, you can unpack the byte stream in the specified format with the struct module, such as using struct.unpack(' Reading binary files is common in Python, such as processing pictures, audio, video, compressed files, or custom binary data formats. Here is a simple and practical example showing how to read binary files in Python. The output may be similar: This can be used to determine the file type (for example, the first few bytes of JPEG are If the file is large, do not Suppose your binary file stores an integer and a floating point number: Basically that's it. Depending on the file type (custom format, pictures, protocol data, etc.) you want to process, the structure may be further parsed after reading. But the core step is always: open with 
? Basic syntax: use
open() and 'rb' modes with open('example.bin', 'rb') as file:
data = file.read()'rb' means opening a file in binary read mode .data is an object of type bytes that contains the original bytes of the file. ? Example: Read an image file (such as PNG or JPG)
# Read the binary content of an image filename = 'photo.jpg'
with open(filename, 'rb') as f:
content = f.read()
# Print the first 20 bytes (usually file header/magic number)
print(content[:20]) b'\xff\xd8\xff\xe0\x00\x10JFIF\x00\x01\x01\x01\x01\x00H\x00H\x00\x01'
\xff\xd8\xff ). 
? Example: Read large files in chunks (save memory)
read() at once. It is recommended to read in chunks: chunk_size = 1024 # 1KB is read each time
with open('large_file.bin', 'rb') as f:
While True:
chunk = f.read(chunk_size)
if not chunk:
break # File reading completed# Process chunk (bytes type)
print(f"Read {len(chunk)} bytes: {chunk[:16]}...") # Print the first 16 bytes ? Example: parse simple binary structures (such as using
struct module)
import struct
with open('data.bin', 'rb') as f:
# Assume that the first 4 bytes are int, and then the 4 bytes are float (little endian format)
buffer = f.read(8)
if len(buffer) == 8:
integer_value, float_value = struct.unpack('<if', buffer)
print(f"Integer: {integer_value}")
print(f"float_value}")'<if' means little endian endian endian, i =int (4 bytes), f =float (4 bytes) ? Tips
print(content[:10].hex()) # The output is as follows: ffd8ffe000104a46
bytes or bytearray for processing.
'rb' , read as bytes , and then parse .
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