Binary bits of knowhow?

Hey everyone:

I am extremely interested in binary. All things binary. And Especially in the binary composition of executables and other data.
I was wondering:
Is there any way to see this binary data? (i.e. See the binary composition of a .txt file? for instance)
I am very interested.
Thanks :D

P.S.
I already know the system (colunms of powers of two, 0 and 1, ect..) so I at least have limited understanding.

I understand your curiousity. Try a program such as WinHex or UltraEdit to view the hex composition of the files. From there, you can do the base conversions if you really want. But those will show you the exact bits contained in the binary.

http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.ht...tor&tg=dl-2001

Like infosecguru2 said... get it into hex and then convert it to binary or you can just go straight to binary using a program... check the link, there's a program named BinEdit.. never used it but looks promising...

= Cheers, jag291 =

The hexadecimal number system is used for viewing and manipulating binary data because viewing millions of 1's and 0's even for a 1k text file would be a daughnting task. If you use a hex editor you would be looking at the binary data, unmodified. But useing hex to make things compact.

It makes it easyer to follow, for example the capital letter A in binary would be 1000001 in binary and 41 in hex. it would be much easyer then to read one word in hex then it would in binary.

Wow, now that would be a little much for me. Unless you like to read binary.

jaguar, the bucky avatar is a nice touch by the way.

BTW:

Let's say I have the binary composition of a program, with that at hand: How can I make the computer run it as such.
Example:
Let's say I have the binary composition of a zip file. Where and how do I write those binary numbers so windows recognizes it as a zip file? I know writing it in a text file and renaming it doesn't work (don't know if that was stupid or not)

:)

simple, take your hex editor or binary editor(ugh) and create a blank document. Set the size to the number of bytes you have, and then type, or paste in the binary in the byte-field (not the text field off to the side that most editors have). Then save it and you should have a valid duplicate. Although copying and pasting the file does the exact same thing. The OS doesn't have copy functions for no reason.

Or simply grab some books on your favorite programming language and learn it's system of I/O. Many have simple functions and api's for you to use to accomplish what you need.

good point. most C-based languages have a binary I/O mode.