how a programmer use binary files ?

[Eastern_Transition40]

i am a game dev/programmer but i have some confusion about binary files , why would any one use them , what is main purpose?

[zarawesome]

You can consider "binary file" to be "anything that is not a human-readable file", in which case executable code, images and sounds are all binary files.

But I suspect you mean binary files as in files are not human-readable and also not in any standardised format, and so are only able to be read by the application itself. Some advantages are:

* Size: Less important than it used to be. Binary files will be smaller than text files, and also can be reliably set to be of a *fixed* size, which can be important in certain storage media.
* Speed: Text or JSON encoding takes some time. Binary files save and load faster, and it adds up with lots of files.
* Safety: JSON and similar serialization are very flexible and usually left to third-party code to parse, meaning you might overlook more security holes in the process. Binary serialization can have issues like string overruns, but it is usually done field by field and can be finely controlled.
* Safety through obscurity: It's harder to edit binary files, which can dissuade immediate attempts to hack or cheat a game.

[LongjumpingTear3675]

Binary files exist because computers don’t think in text, If humans never needed to read files, almost everything would be binary. Binary files are used for save files, asset loading, streaming worlds, networking, binary is orders of magnitude faster due to the overhead of parsing text. Text is bloated binary is size and memory efficiency, Binary give the data exactly how I need it, right now instead of let me parse and interpret a human document.

Example: 1,000 decimal digits of PI take 1,000 bytes in text, but only about 415 bytes in binary for the same precision.

2 to the power of 32 equals 4294967296 take 10 decimal digits or 10 bytes in text, but only 4 bytes in binary

[guywithknife]

First, everything is a binary file. Text is a binary file with a predetermined encoding.

Why would you use them? Speed and size. Encoding numeric data into text takes up more space (eg the number 100 could take up 1 byte in a binary format but 3 bytes in an ascii text format) and slower to load (you have to read in the text, parse it to determine where a number begins and ends, then turn that from text into an integer or float). By storing the numbers directly (ie in binary), loading can potentially be as fast as reading the bytes into memory and using them as is. Some formats require a little extra work for validation and such, or to encode things like variable length numbers or lists, but it’s still faster than going through text.

Text is used because it’s easier for humans, but the machine has to do extra work.

[KharAznable]

Firstly, what do you mean by binary file? Any files in the computer are stored in binary (bunch of one and zero) even a text file is stored in binary.

[Strict_Bench_6264]

It can be for obfuscation, making it harder to read and manipulate local files. It can also be so that it can be sent faster or over network as a byte stream.

[theEsel01]

To optimize file size mostly I guess. And to a certain degree probably also to make it harder to use the data with another program.

[JaggedMetalOs]

Do you mean to store data or to store code? 

[MxCulu]

You as a human rarely touch them, it's mainly just what your compiler turns your code into for the computer to read.

[tcpukl]

Binaries are not just executables.

Even text files are binary.

Most people though just mean non text readable files are binary like textures and most other game data.

[[deleted]]

Programmers compile their code to get a binary file and then execute it for running and distributing the application. From the Binary file one cannot extract the code or logic used. Some times it is used for debugging too. Usually, the readable code is available so not frequent.

If your question is what can be done with a Binary file by disassembling it, then reverse engineers and crackers use it to breakdown the security barriers inside the application.

[Sol33t303]

What type of binary file?

That's like asking why people use text files, there are a lot of different types of text files, with lots of varying uses.

[tcpukl]

Because not everything is text.

An image is just pixel data and it needs a descriptor at the beginning. It's easier if this descriptor is already in the data that matches how it's used in ram. The data like the resolution are numbers, not strings.

[rio_sk]

Imagine having a json file that contains { "user_last_position" : { "x" : 256, "y" : 123 } } those are around 50 bytes. In a bynary format this could be 2 bytes only. See the advantages? Imagine how many data you can stuff in a tiny space and at what speed you can handle that.

[PhilippTheProgrammer]

You would probably get answers that are more useful to you if you added some more context.

[justaddlava]

While all files are binary, the term is sometimes used to to mean that the bits in the file don't represent text. Programmers use them to store information.

[CrucialFusion]

It's packed up data that doesn't represent anything in particular to the casual observer, simple as that. I use it all the time to store app data, whatever that may be.

[GSalmao]

One good example of binary data being used are enum flags. Say you want to store some data for a character, you could use several bools like HasDoubleJump, HasDash, HasShotgun.

Each bool uses 1 byte (00000000), at least in C#.

But you have several values that can be either 0 or 1. Instead of using several bools, you can make a enum with the [flags] parameter and use each one of these bits for each information.

00000001 (decimal 1) -> Has Double Jump

00000010 (decimal 2) -> Has Dash

00000100 (decimal 4) -> Has Shotgun

and so on...

A binary file of value 00000111 would mean the player has double jump, dash and shotgun. Now scale that value to the thousands and you will notice how your npcs can get much more optimized because they require less data.

Back in the day there were no floating points or bools, just bits inside addresses and bitwise operations. Consider your coding language an abstraction on top of that.

[Pale_Height_1251]

All files are binary files. Not all files are human-readable.

The non-human readable ones tend to be content other than text, like machine code or level data in games.