Python program to convert ASCII to Binary

In this article, we are going to discuss the conversion of ASCII to Binary in the Python programming language.

Method 1: Using binascii module

Binascii helps convert between binary and various ASCII-encoded binary representations.

a2b_uu() function:  Here the “uu” stands for “UNIX-to-UNIX encoding” which takes care of the data conversion from strings to binary and ASCII values according to the specified program. The a2b_uu() function is used to convert the specified ASCII format to its corresponding binary equivalent.

Syntax: a2b_uu(Text)

Parameter: This function accepts a single parameter which is illustrated below:

• Text: This is the specified ASCII string that is going to be converted into its binary equivalent.

Return Values: This function returns the binary equivalent.

Example: Convert  ASCII to binary using Python

Python3

# Python program to illustrate the
# conversion of ASCII to Binary

# Importing binascii module
import binascii

# Initializing a ASCII string
Text = "21T9'(&ES(&$@0U,@4&]R=&%L"

# Calling the a2b_uu() function to
# Convert the ascii string to binary
Binary = binascii.a2b_uu(Text)

# Getting the Binary value
print(Binary)

Output:

b'GFG is a CS Portal'

Time Complexity: O(logn)

Space Complexity: O(n)

Method 2: Using Built-in Types

Firstly, call string.encode() function to turn the specified string into an array of bytes and then call int.from_bytes(byte_array, byte_order) with byte_order as “big” to convert the byte_array into a binary integer. Finally, call bin(binary_int) to convert binary_int to a string of binary characters.

Example: Convert  ASCII to binary using Python

Python3

# Python program to illustrate the
# conversion of ASCII to Binary

# Calling string.encode() function to
# turn the specified string into an array
# of bytes
byte_array = "GFG".encode()

# Converting the byte_array into a binary
# integer
binary_int = int.from_bytes(byte_array, "big")

# Converting binary_int to a string of
# binary characters
binary_string = bin(binary_int)

# Getting the converted binary characters
print(binary_string)

Output:

0b10001110100011001000111

The Time and Space Complexity of all the methods is :

Time Complexity: O(logn)

Space Complexity: O(n)

Method #3 – using ord(), zfill() and bin() method –

In this approach we will simply use the ord() method alongside the bin() method to convert the string into binary. We will do it characterwise and later we will join it together

Step – 1 : Firstly we will define a function which takes the string as input.

Step – 2 : Then we will use the ord() and bin() method together to first convert the character into it’s ASCII value and then convert that ASCII into binary.

Step – 3: As the bin() method of Python converts into binary and starts the result with “0b” we will consider values starting after the”b”, generally the binary of any character is of length 8 (including the 0b part), so as we are omitting the 0b part we will use the zfill() method to make those results of length 8.

Step – 4 : As we are converting character by character the result will be a list in which each element will be the binary equivalent of each character. So to print them together we will use the join() method.

Below is the Implementation –

Python3

# Function to convert a string
# into it's equivalent Binary
def string_to_binary(st : str):
    return [bin(ord(i))[2:].zfill(8) for i in st]

# This is an optional function
# this is to show that our result is correct
def binary_to_string(bits):
    return ''.join([chr(int(i, 2)) for i in bits])

# Driver Code
st = "GFG"

# Storing the result in variable b
# Currently the result is in list format
b = string_to_binary(st)

# We are joining each element of the list
bt = "".join(b)

# Printing the final Result
print("Converting the String into Binary : ",bt)

# This section is just to verify
# the result we got is correct

s = binary_to_string(b)

# Printing the result
print("The string created from the binary parts : ",s)

Output

Converting the String into Binary :  010001110100011001000111
The string created from the binary parts :  GFG

Time Complexity – O(n) # n is the length of the string

Auxiliary Space – O(n) #n is the length of the list that will form