"ASCII file" refers to a "text" file that is readable by the naked eye (it only contains the letters a-z, numbers, carriage returns, and punctuation marks). Conversely, a binary fie is not readable by the naked eye (it contains the ASCII characters in addition to binary codes).
One of the least-understood aspects of FTP transfers is the difference between ASCII and Binary mode data transfers. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and is a type of character encoding based on the English language used on devices that handle information stored in text. It includes 33 non-printed control characters and 94 printed characters such as letters and punctuation. When files are transferred in ASCII mode, the transferred data is considered to contain only ASCII formatted text. The party that is receiving the transferred data is responsible for translating the format of the received text to one that is compatible with their operating system. The most common example of how this is applied pertains to the way Windows and UNIX handle newlines. On a Windows computer, pressing the "enter" key inserts two characters in an ASCII text document - a carriage return (which places the cursor at the beginning of the line) and a line feed (which places the cursor on the line below the current one). On UNIX systems, only a line feed is used. ASCII text formatted for use on UNIX systems does not display properly when viewed on a Windows system and vice versa. Binary mode refers to transferring files as a binary stream of data. Where ASCII mode may use special control characters to format data, binary mode transmits the raw bytes of the file being transferred. In this way, the file is transferred in its exact original form.
A text file is a file that is properly understood as a sequence of character data (represented using ASCII, Unicode, or some other standard), separated into lines. Typically, when a text file is displayed as a sequence of characters, it is easily human-readable.
A binary file is anything else. A binary file will include some data that is not written using a character-encoding standard - typically, some number would be represented using binary within the file, instead of using the character representation of its various digits (in some base).
Text files are human-readable, binary files aren't. Note: There are some characters that are not common in text files, like 00H-08H,0BH,0E-1FH,7FH.
different files
A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in binary form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, computer document files containing formatted text. Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; binary files that contain only textual data - without, for example, any formatting information - are called plain text files. In many cases, plain text files are considered to be different from binary files because binary files are made up of more than just plain text. When downloading, a completely functional program without any installer is also often called program binary, or binaries (as opposed to the source code).A text file (sometimes spelled "textfile") is a generic description of a kind of computer file in a computer file system.[1] At this generic level of description, there are two kinds of computer files: 1) text files; and 2) binary files.[2] This broad two-level distinction is widely recognized and applied in computing, even though it can be misleading,and subject to differing interpretation
The difference is that text files may only contain printable character codes, either from the ASCII character set or the UNICODE character set. That is, letters, digits, punctuation, space, tab and other symbols, including line feed or carriage return/line feed pairs. Non-printable characters, such as the null character '\0' (or '\0\0' in UNICODE), are not permitted in plain-text files, however UNICODE files permit a 16-bit endian marker at the start of the file to denote the byte order of the wide characters that follow. Text files can be displayed in any plain-text editor or word processor (as unformatted text). The entire text can also be extracted as a string (memory permitting), or as a stream of printable characters in a string buffer. Binary files, on the other hand, cannot be interpreted as plain-text (although they may contain plain text elements). Binary files may contain any combination of bytes, and require special handling in order to be interpreted correctly. The exact meaning of the order of the bytes is entirely dependent upon the program that created the binary files in the first place.
DAT file are binary files with text. They can be opened in Word. They aren't pictures that can be converted into JPEGs.
You can distinguish between binary and text files, and for the most part even identify what type of binary file, by using the "file" command. For example:~$ file unknownfileunknownfile: PNG image data, 155 x 155, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlacedThis tells you that the file is a PNG file by reading metadata and/or magic numbers in the file. When used on a text file, the command will return "ASCII text" or "Unicode text."
The cp command does that.
You can are ASCII-tabellen. For converting binary to text
Ascii or Binary?The general rule of thumb is if you can view the file in a text editor like notepad (ie. .html, .js, .css files etc) you should upload in ASCII mode, most others (including images, sound files, video, zip files, executable's etc) should be uploaded in Binary. Why does it matter which mode?If you upload images etc. as ascii you'll end up with corrupted files. Some browsers seem capable of figuring it out, but not all... and not all the time.Same thing with uploading text files as binary. While this is less important for html files, scripts will have a HUGE problem with it and will just not work.EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE OF THUMB:If your text files contain international characters (ie. Chinese or Japanese text), they may have to be uploaded as binary. The reason is that ascii takes into account differences between DOS and UNIX files (7 bits) but it doesn't do well with text using higher bits.SUMMARY:ASCII Files.htm .html .shtml .php .pl .cgi .js .cnf .css.forward .htaccess .map .pwd .txt .grp .ctlBinary Files.jpg .gif .png .tif .exe .zip .sit .rar .ace.class .mid .ra .avi .ocx .wav .mp3 .au
There are two file types in C++ namely, text file and binary file. In text file EOF or end of file is represented by an end of file character having ASCII 26. In binary files EOF or end of file is represented by NULL in the file pointer
Binary data means 0's and 1's. That is, information that can be transmitted across a network and is understood by a computer. It doesn't matter what the 0's and 1's actually represent -- that is a matter for the programs that use the data.In point of fact, all data is binary. However plain-text (ASCII or UNICODE) is regarded as non-binary because it requires no special handling to translate the individual character codes back into a human-readable form. Video, image and sound files are all examples of binary data, because the data requires special handling to present the output in a form that humans can understand. Some binary data is never intended for humans, however. Executables, for instance, contain a mixture of binary data and plain text data, but the majority of that data is solely used by the computer itself -- machine code instructions to run the program. Portions of that code will translate into an interface that allow humans to interact with the program, producing yet more binary data that must be translated into a human-readable form, including plain text data.All data is binary, however binary data refers to any non-plain text data, such as images, sound files, videos and executables, or proprietary data formats such as word processing files or any data that requires special handling to present the information to the user. Plain text files are binary as well, but the transition from binary to text requires no special handling because every ASCII/UNICODE character code translates directly to a symbol that is human-readable -- all you need is a text reader. Many binary files contain a mixture of binary data and plain text, but only the plain text portion is readable, everything else must be translated, usually by the program that created the file in the first place.
.b is an extension for binary files mostly used by video game emulators... .b is also the extension for BASIC programming language source text files...