Reading binary file and looping over each byte

Question

In Python, how do I read in a binary file and loop over each byte of that file?

Answer 1

If the file is not too big that holding it in memory is a problem:

with open("filename", "rb") as f:
    bytes_read = f.read()
for b in bytes_read:
    process_byte(b)

where process_byte represents some operation you want to perform on the passed-in byte.

If you want to process a chunk at a time:

with open("filename", "rb") as f:
    bytes_read = f.read(CHUNKSIZE)
    while bytes_read:
        for b in bytes_read:
            process_byte(b)
        bytes_read = f.read(CHUNKSIZE)

The with statement is available in Python 2.5 and greater.