[Tutor] Getting a binary value from a file

[Kent Johnson]

Chuk Goodin wrote:

> I have a file full of "integers". If I get a file handle (e.g. file1) 
> and then read something in, I get back some hex value. How can I go on 
> to use that in my program?
> 
> For example, in interactive mode, file1.read(4) gets me an output of 
> '/x00/x00/x00/x1c' (might not be exact, I'm at a different computer 
> right now). Can I just store that in a variable and then somehow convert 
> it to decimal?

Use the struct module:
In [26]: import struct
In [29]: struct.unpack('>i', '\x00\x00\x00\x1c')[0]
Out[29]: 28

Note the value returned from unpack is a tuple, hence the [0] subscript.
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-struct.html

> Sorry if this is too newbish.

Not for this list!

Kent