ritu wrote: > Hi, > > I'm wondering if Python has a utility to detect binary content in > files? Or if anyone has any ideas on how that can be accomplished? I > haven't been able to find any useful information to accomplish this > (my other option is to fire off a perl script from within m python > script that will tell me whether the file is binary), so any pointers > will be appreciated. > > Thanks, > Ritu
There isn't any perfect test. The usual heuristic is to check if there are any NUL bytes in the file: >>> '\0' in some_string That can fail, of course. UTF-16-encoded text will have tons of NUL bytes, and some binary files may not have any. -- -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
