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

Reading binary file in Python and looping over each byte

New in Python 3.5 is the pathlib module, which has a convenience method specifically to read in a file as bytes, allowing us to iterate over the bytes. I consider this a decent (if quick and dirty) answer:

import pathlib

for byte in pathlib.Path(path).read_bytes():
    print(byte)

Interesting that this is the only answer to mention pathlib.

In Python 2, you probably would do this (as Vinay Sajip also suggests):

with open(path, 'b') as file:
    for byte in file.read():
        print(byte)

In the case that the file may be too large to iterate over in-memory, you would chunk it, idiomatically, using the iter function with the callable, sentinel signature - the Python 2 version:

with open(path, 'b') as file:
    callable = lambda: file.read(1024)
    sentinel = bytes() # or b''
    for chunk in iter(callable, sentinel): 
        for byte in chunk:
            print(byte)

(Several other answers mention this, but few offer a sensible read size.)

Best practice for large files or buffered/interactive reading

Let's create a function to do this, including idiomatic uses of the standard library for Python 3.5+:

from pathlib import Path
from functools import partial
from io import DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE

def file_byte_iterator(path):
    """given a path, return an iterator over the file
    that lazily loads the file
    """
    path = Path(path)
    with path.open('rb') as file:
        reader = partial(file.read1, DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE)
        file_iterator = iter(reader, bytes())
        for chunk in file_iterator:
            yield from chunk

Note that we use file.read1. file.read blocks until it gets all the bytes requested of it or EOF. file.read1 allows us to avoid blocking, and it can return more quickly because of this. No other answers mention this as well.

Demonstration of best practice usage:

Let's make a file with a megabyte (actually mebibyte) of pseudorandom data:

import random
import pathlib
path = 'pseudorandom_bytes'
pathobj = pathlib.Path(path)

pathobj.write_bytes(
  bytes(random.randint(0, 255) for _ in range(2**20)))

Now let's iterate over it and materialize it in memory:

>>> l = list(file_byte_iterator(path))
>>> len(l)
1048576

We can inspect any part of the data, for example, the last 100 and first 100 bytes:

>>> l[-100:]
[208, 5, 156, 186, 58, 107, 24, 12, 75, 15, 1, 252, 216, 183, 235, 6, 136, 50, 222, 218, 7, 65, 234, 129, 240, 195, 165, 215, 245, 201, 222, 95, 87, 71, 232, 235, 36, 224, 190, 185, 12, 40, 131, 54, 79, 93, 210, 6, 154, 184, 82, 222, 80, 141, 117, 110, 254, 82, 29, 166, 91, 42, 232, 72, 231, 235, 33, 180, 238, 29, 61, 250, 38, 86, 120, 38, 49, 141, 17, 190, 191, 107, 95, 223, 222, 162, 116, 153, 232, 85, 100, 97, 41, 61, 219, 233, 237, 55, 246, 181]
>>> l[:100]
[28, 172, 79, 126, 36, 99, 103, 191, 146, 225, 24, 48, 113, 187, 48, 185, 31, 142, 216, 187, 27, 146, 215, 61, 111, 218, 171, 4, 160, 250, 110, 51, 128, 106, 3, 10, 116, 123, 128, 31, 73, 152, 58, 49, 184, 223, 17, 176, 166, 195, 6, 35, 206, 206, 39, 231, 89, 249, 21, 112, 168, 4, 88, 169, 215, 132, 255, 168, 129, 127, 60, 252, 244, 160, 80, 155, 246, 147, 234, 227, 157, 137, 101, 84, 115, 103, 77, 44, 84, 134, 140, 77, 224, 176, 242, 254, 171, 115, 193, 29]

Don't iterate by lines for binary files

Don't do the following - this pulls a chunk of arbitrary size until it gets to a newline character - too slow when the chunks are too small, and possibly too large as well:

    with open(path, 'rb') as file:
        for chunk in file: # text newline iteration - not for bytes
            yield from chunk

The above is only good for what are semantically human readable text files (like plain text, code, markup, markdown etc... essentially anything ascii, utf, latin, etc... encoded) that you should open without the 'b' flag.