binary file
- noun
- /ˈbaɪnəri faɪl/
- Specialized
- To open a binary file, you need specialized software that can interpret its format.
Examples
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Please leave a message or fax or a binary file after the beep.
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The new program expands Origin's importing and exporting capabilities by providing commands for the company's LabTalk, which allows rapid reading and writing of ASCII or binary files.
Academic text (1998) -
How can we know the size of a binary file?
Blog text (25) -
And it's building the binary file out of the libraries and then it will push them up to the board.
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And we want to create a binary file and we're using dot directives and then the file is hello world dot S.
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Hi, I am using filestreams to create a binary file (c:..abc.bin).
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At the point of opening the binary file, I need to perform some checksum by checking its size. But how do we know the size of the file before it is corrupted?
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These tools are expected to perform a large range of dangerous functions, such as parsing dozens of different file systems, email databases, and dense binary file formats.
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As the data is made available to end users, it is distributed through GUIs and downloaded as datasets via various formats like CSV and potentially Keyhole Markup Language or MATLAB binary files.
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The m68k has a 16-bit wide bus, so each 128 KB 8-bit ROM has half a word, and they need to be merged into a single 256 KB binary file.
Blog text (11)
Synonyms
A file you can run as a program on a computer
A single computer file of data that programs cannot easily read or change
How Accessible
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a computer file containing machine-readable (non–plain text) data' is directly derived from 'binary' (relating to binary/machine code or non-text data) + 'file' (an electronic collection). This compositional, technical distinction (binary vs. text file) is common in computing and across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent senses can readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Binary file comes from how early computers stored information: the word binary means long strings of 'ones and zeros', and a file is like a closed box holding that data. Because the contents are in those 'ones and zeros' and not readable as 'plain text', you need a 'special program' to open it, which is why a binary file means a file that only certain software can read.