Binary file IO in python, where to start?

Question

As a self-taught python hobbyist, how would I go about learning to import and export binary files using standard formats?

I\'d like to implement a script that takes

Answer 1

If you want to construct and analyse binary files the struct module will give you the basic tools, but it isn't very friendly, especially if you want to look at things that aren't a whole number of bytes.

There are a few modules that can help, such as BitVector, bitarray and bitstring. (I favour bitstring, but I wrote it and so may be biased).

For parsing binary formats the hachoir module is very good, but I suspect it's too high-level for your current needs.