Appropriate high level language to deal with binary data

Posted by fortran on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by fortran
Published on 2010-04-22T15:43:55Z Indexed on 2010/04/28 22:17 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 214

Filed under:

binary

|

encoding

|

parsing

|

programming-languages

|

language-features

Hi,

I need to write a small tool that parses a textual input and generates some binary encoded data. I would prefer to stay away from C and the like, in favour of a higher level, (optionally) safer, more expressive and faster to develop language.

My language of choice for this kind of tasks usually is Python, but for this case dealing with binary raw data can be problematic if one isn't very careful with the numbers being promoted to bignums, sign extensions and such.

Ideally I would like to have records with named bitfields that are portable to be serialised in a consistent manner.

(I know that there's a strong point in doing it in a language I already master, although it isn't optimal, but I think this could be a good opportunity to learn something new).

Thanks.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about binary

Binary to strings as binary? C #/.NET

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Redis keys are binary safe. I'd like to mess around and put binary into redis using C#. My client of choice doesn't support writing binary keys it uses keys and it make sense. However i am just fooling around so tell me how i can do this. How do i convert a raw byte[] into a string? At first i was… >>> More
Finding if a Binary Tree is a Binary Search Tree

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Today I had an interview where I was asked to write a program which takes a Binary Tree and returns true if it is also a Binary Search Tree otherwise false. My Approach1: Perform an inroder traversal and store the elements in O(n) time. Now scan through the array/list of elements and check if element… >>> More
EXC_BAD_ACCESS and KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS after intiating a print sequence.

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
MAC G4/1.5GHz/2GB/1TB+ OS10.4.11 Start up Volume has been erased/complete reinstall with updated software. Current problem only occurs when printing to an Epson Artisan 800 [USB as well as Ethernet connected] when using Macromedia FreeHand 10.0.1.67. All other apps/printers work fine. Memory has been… >>> More
How to convert binary read/write to non-binary read/write in C++

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have some C++ code from somewhere that reads and writes data in binary format. I want to see what it's reading and writing in the file, so I want to convert it's binary read and write to non-binary read and write. Also, when I convert the binary write to non-binary write, I want it to still be… >>> More
division by 2 in Binary Signed digit (Redundant Binary representation)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How can I do division by 2 in Binary Signed digit (Redundant Binary representation) ? Shifting won't work right ? >>> More

Related posts about encoding

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?> not <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am using lxml with tree.write(xmlFileOut, pretty_print = True, xml_declaration = True, encoding='UTF-8' to write out my opened and edited xml file, but I absolutely need to have the xml declaration as <?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?> and NOT <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'… >>> More
Ivar definitions show 'long' type encoding as 'long long' type encoding

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I've found what I think may be a bug with Ivar and Objective-C runtime. I'm using XCode 3.2.1 and associated libraries, developing a 64 bit app on X86_64 (MacBook Pro). Where I would expect the type encoding for the following "longVal" to be 'l', the Ivar encoding is showing a 'q' (which is a 'long… >>> More
How to avoid encoding the key of request parameters being encoding

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to send a http request using WS.url() with a action receive a custom class parameter like public static void add(@Valid MyPage info) {...} There is a Map in MyPage @Required public Map<String, String> content = new HashMap<String, String>(); But When I try to send a request… >>> More
C# Check if character exists in encoding

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a program that a part renders a bitmap font in CP437. In a function that renders the text with I want to be able to check whether a char is available in CP437 before the encoding conversion, like: public static void DrawCharacter(this Graphics g, char c) { if (char_exist_in_encoding(Encoding… >>> More
How to detect the character encoding of a text file?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I try to detect which character encoding is used in my file. I try with this code to get the standard encoding public static Encoding GetFileEncoding(string srcFile) { // *** Use Default of Encoding.Default (Ansi CodePage) Encoding enc = Encoding.Default; // *** Detect byte… >>> More