Detecting Binary content in files

[Matt Nordhoff]

ritu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm wondering if Python has a utility to detect binary content in
> files? Or if anyone has any ideas on how that can be accomplished? I
> haven't been able to find any useful information to accomplish this
> (my other option is to fire off a perl script from within m python
> script that will tell me whether the file is binary), so any pointers
> will be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ritu

There isn't any perfect test. The usual heuristic is to check if there
are any NUL bytes in the file:

>>> '\0' in some_string

That can fail, of course. UTF-16-encoded text will have tons of NUL
bytes, and some binary files may not have any.
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