Using Python How can I read the bits in a byte?

Question

I have a file where the first byte contains encoded information. In Matlab I can read the byte bit by bit with var = fread(file, 8, \'ubit1\'), and then retrie

Answer 1

You won't be able to read each bit one by one - you have to read it byte by byte. You can easily extract the bits out, though:

f = open("myfile", 'rb')
# read one byte
byte = f.read(1)
# convert the byte to an integer representation
byte = ord(byte)
# now convert to string of 1s and 0s
byte = bin(byte)[2:].rjust(8, '0')
# now byte contains a string with 0s and 1s
for bit in byte:
    print bit