binary file
Sign in to savenon-human-readable computer file encoded in binary form
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Article
A hex dump of the 318 byte Wikipedia favicon, or . The first column numerates the line's starting address, while the * indicates repetition. A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document files containing formatted text, such as older Microsoft Word document files, contain the text of the document but also contain formatting information in binary form.
Background and terminology
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computer file
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file format
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text file
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executable
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Microsoft Windows
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email
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Q15777
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Q2407
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computer program
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compiler
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bit
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byte
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Mac
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binary star
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machine code
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GIF
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data compression
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file system
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metadata
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text editor
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