This module encodes and decodes files in binhex4 format, a format allowing representation of Macintosh files in ASCII. On the Macintosh, both forks of a file and the finder information are encoded (or decoded), on other platforms only the data fork is handled.
Note: In Python 3.x, special Macintosh support has been removed.
The binhex module defines the following functions:
binhex.binhex(input, output)
Convert a binary file with filename input to binhex file output. The output parameter can either be a filename or a file-like object (any object supporting a write() and close() method).
binhex.hexbin(input[, output])
Decode a binhex file input. input may be a filename or a file- like object supporting read() and close() methods. The resulting file is written to a file named output, unless the argument is omitted in which case the output filename is read from the binhex file.
The following exception is also defined:
exception exception binhex.Error
Exception raised when something can’t be encoded using the binhex format (for example, a filename is too long to fit in the filename field), or when input is not properly encoded binhex data.
See also:
- Module binascii
- Support module containing ASCII-to-binary and binary-to-ASCII conversions.
There is an alternative, more powerful interface to the coder and decoder, see the source for details.
If you code or decode textfiles on non-Macintosh platforms they will still use the old Macintosh newline convention (carriage-return as end of line).
As of this writing, hexbin() appears to not work in all cases.