What exactly causes binary file “gibberish”?

Question

I haven\'t found an answer to this particular question; perhaps there isn\'t one. But I\'ve been wondering for a while about it.

What exactly causes a binary file to

Answer 1

The display looks interesting, because a binary file can contain non-printable characters. It is up to the displaying program to replace such characters with something else.

This can be prevented by using a hex editor. Such a program displays each byte from the file as its hexadecimal value. That makes for a nice tabular view of the file, but it is not easy for the average person to decipher this view, because we are not used to look at data that way.

There are a few ways to find out what program a file might belong to. You can look at the beginning of the file and with some knowledge, you might recognize the file type. There are some types that begin with the same characters (RAR, GIF etc.). For other types it might not be as easy.

In Linux you can use the "file" command to help you determine file type. There are probably programs for Windows that will do the same.