How do I read .bin file in Python? And why do I get weird looking outputs?

Question

Here I'm trying to read a .bin file in PyCharm, I made a for in loop with range to make the reading limited because the file is so big (around 8GB)

read = open("D:\Office\Hadith Library\data\shamela.bin", 'rb')

for i in range(0,10):
  p = read.read(8)
  print(p , "\n")

The outcome I get from the print statement is:

b'PK\x03\x04\n\x00\x00\x00' 

b'\x00\x00\x9bt\x8bQ\x00\x00' 

b'\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00' 

b'\x00\x00\t\x00\x00\x0014' 

b'42.041/P' 

b'K\x03\x04\n\x00\t\x00\x00' 

b'\x00\xa4l\x8bQ\x00\x00\x00' 

b'\x00\x0c\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00' 

b'\x00\x1a\x00\x00\x00144' 

b'2.041/14' 

Why's that? What's going on? appreciate the help!

Answer 1

.bin files are usually "binary" files as suggested in its name, and this behaviour is expected - it's printing out binary.

If you know the format of the .bin file, you can try and decode it with struct - check the docs here . If you don't - then you typically won't be able to retrieve useful information from it.