Convert raw binary file to ascii

[Peter Otten]

r2 wrote:

> I have a memory dump from a machine I am trying to analyze. I can view
> the file in a hex editor to see text strings in the binary code. I
> don't see a way to save these ascii representations of the binary, so
> I went digging into Python to see if there were any modules to help.
> 
> I found one I think might do what I want it to do - the binascii
> module. Can anyone describe to me how to convert a raw binary file to
> an ascii file using this module. I've tried? Boy, I've tried.

That won't work because a text editor doesn't need any help to convert the 
bytes into characters. If it expects ascii it just will be puzzled by bytes 
that are not valid ascii. Also, it will happily display byte sequences that 
are valid ascii, but that you as a user will see as gibberish because they 
were meant to be binary data by the program that wrote them.

> Am I correct in assuming I can get the converted binary to ascii text
> I see in a hex editor using this module? I'm new to this forensics
> thing and it's quite possible I am mixing technical terms. I am not
> new to Python, however. Thanks for your help.

Unix has the "strings" commandline tool to extract text from a binary.
Get hold of a copy of the MinGW tools if you are on windows.

Peter