String

Background & Context

    • Arbitrary binary data represented as a Wolfram Language string.
    • Used for importing or exporting entire raw binary data.

Import & Export

  • Import["file","String"] imports a file as a raw string, representing each byte of the file as the character corresponding to FromCharacterCode[byte].
  • Export["file",str,"String"] exports a Wolfram Language string of characters to a binary file. Characters with an encoding greater than 255 are converted to their ASCII representation before exporting.
  • The format "String" must be explicitly specified.
  • ExportString[expr,"format"] and Import[Export["tmp",expr,"format"],"String"] return the same expression.
  • Import["file","String"] reads any binary file, representing its raw content as a Wolfram Language string object.
  • Export["file",str,"String"] exports a Wolfram Language string to a file.
  • No character encoding transformations are performed when importing or exporting as "String".
  • Export["file",expr,"String"] exports a textual representation of expr.
  • See the following reference pages for full general information:
  • Import, Exportimport from or export to a file
    CloudImport, CloudExportimport from or export to a cloud object
    ImportString, ExportStringimport from or export to a string
    ImportByteArray, ExportByteArrayimport from or export to a byte array

Examples

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Basic Examples  (1)

Read an arbitrary binary file and return it as a raw Wolfram Language string:

Show the first bytes of the result, which contain unprintable characters:

Convert the string that represents the file "ocelot.jpg" to graphics:

Scope  (1)

Import binary data and compute an MD5 checksum: