Converting a string to its binary representation involves encoding the string to bytes and then converting those bytes to a binary format. Here’s how you can perform this conversion in Python:
1. Using Python Built-in Functions
The process of converting a string to binary can be done in a few steps. First, encode the string into bytes, and then convert each byte to its binary representation.
1.1 Example: Basic Conversion
In this example:
s.encode()
converts the string to a bytes object using the default encoding (UTF-8).format(byte, '08b')
converts each byte to an 8-bit binary string.''.join(...)
combines the binary strings for each byte into a single binary representation.
2. Using `bin()` Function for Individual Characters
If you need to convert each character of the string to its binary representation individually, you can use the bin()
function.
2.1 Example: Binary Conversion of Each Character
In this example:
ord(char)
gets the Unicode code point of the character.format(ord(char), '08b')
converts the code point to an 8-bit binary string.' '.join(...)
separates the binary strings of individual characters with spaces.
3. Summary
Converting a string to binary in Python involves encoding the string to bytes and then formatting those bytes as binary numbers. By using built-in functions such as encode()
, format()
, and ord()
, you can achieve a straightforward conversion of strings to their binary representations.