Python ASCII to binary

Question

Is there a builtin function that converts ASCII to binary?

For example. converts 'P' to 01010000.

I'm using Python 2.6.6

score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 24 '10 at 00:49

17

How about two together?

bin(ord('P'))
# 0b1010000

answered Dec 24 '10 at 00:49

Steve Tjoa

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What does the 0b mean at the start of it – Cripto Jun 27 '13 at 01:40
@Steve that is actually unusable binary, its only 7 characters, "P" is 01010000 but that code is removing the leading 0, outputting only 1010000 which is only 7 characters and therefore unusable – Devon M Feb 04 '14 at 19:24

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 24 '10 at 01:11

Do you want to convert bytes or characters? There's a difference.

If you want bytes, then you can use

# Python 2.x
' '.join(bin(ord(x))[2:].zfill(8) for x in u'שלום, עולם!'.encode('UTF-8'))

# Python 3.x
' '.join(bin(x)[2:].zfill(8) for x in 'שלום, עולם!'.encode('UTF-8'))

The bin function converts an integer to binary. The [2:] strips the leading 0b. The .zfill(8) pads each byte to 8 bits.

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 17 '12 at 09:35

0

bin(reduce(lambda x, y: 256*x+y, (ord(c) for c in "Hello world"), 0))

this is for multiple characters

edited Aug 17 '12 at 09:35

j0k

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answered Dec 24 '10 at 00:51

Saif al Harthi

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Python ASCII to binary

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