I am assuming it inputs the byte stream of the file to the text parser and only glibberish comes out
The app will find the file incomprehensible and will tell you that the file is corrupted or in a format the app can’t understand.
An app that works with raw next (Windows’ Editor or notepad++ or any IDE) will try to parse the binary data as text and fail miserably, showing you lots of undecodable-unicode characters.
Example:
%.š /BûT¹Ò;lŠ^œ{åúvž’Û X“—دa%“9HúU”¿ú¦¥N̉ČԿ†«dd’º•©“ÜÈê*è9$mÕ lfN‹„‘ª$bÿû°@§ gÂqâ`tŒøn<cm-‰ Ljmð3¡|ñ°k§û–ÿîo<©ªxgTZ¯óT†"x¦1Q®ÔÚóI# 3édgþ™>´dʶÌþB…o™ÜË7bMûö”]«ê|= ®©w„Ïɳ²NdÅh˜Ñ#´¦ïÕ®ºAd`‹®«R²•]‡ÐÏE päX 0PÛnE”Ø΋şçÒñD]îbwNðèB$¤“nnzráiqÖ›XåÄvØÉË \ø\¦P¼¶Xæ‰Â6…”ææ†?äÖåœ:m|?B3C+dW»f†`Ê$Lˆmìóz¯xK>‘)ƒÜÉTÝ ¨@‘ Š£Ð:¨õ¹|!„D QC#£ö ªJ¼×u›³ÕÒ©˜gV"!V«; áäi³EJ…3;zã[±0&ËsÖ_Ë·³‡ ó8MaTô”ÖBïKßïùl4zHJE’N¢ìo™iÒg$½›—U.ºtÉW›SXGÓÐŒ§N¢–L¨YþïZOPNìÌÙŸN ŽŠióyÄ,QÍfÙ¬
Imagine you have a book that’s written in Korean. If you gave it to me and asked me to read it out loud, I wouldn’t be able to make sense out of it. If you gave it to a Korean person, however, they could read it perfectly fine.
The book itself hasn’t changed — just the person reading the book. And that person has a different set of skills (or instructions, if you will).
I feel like you want to but binary data into text. You may be interested in base64, or base32 for easier human processing.
Example of short low bitrate Opus audio in base64:
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
Is that what you are looking for?
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz is right. I’ll interpret your question as “can I send this to someone and they will be able to play it” – then the answer is yes. You can take a binary file like mp4, pretend it’s text like I did above, and send it via chat or a lemmy post. The recipient will need to copy that text, enter it in, for instance, notepad++ and save the file on their disk. Renaming the file from the-text.txt to the-text.mp4 should be sufficient for any audio player to pick the file up and play it.
Edit: doesn’t actually work
Not entirely true. There are bits in binary files that cannot be rendered correctly by text editors. In fact, if a text editor cannot read a bit, it might omit it or substitute it with a generic placeholder. Instead, what you would do is encode the file into a text format and the transmit it to somebody, who would then decode the text back into its original file format.
This is how email attachments and uploading/downloading files from the web work. Usually that text format is called base64. In email attachments, they go one step further and typically limit the encoded data to fixed length lines called chunks.
But yeah, sending raw binary data as text requires special formatting first. Opening it up in a text editor and copying and pasting is not enough.
What do you even mean by that?
The text program obviously can’t process and play the audio, it will try to open the file as if it contains text.
But it’s not like opening the file destroys it. You can still just close the text program, and then open the file using a suitable media program instead.
Here’s the thing: Let’s say your text editor interprets the file as ASCII.
Several characters in the ASCII table aren’t printable. The first 32 characters in the table are control characters, so they don’t get displayed on screen as text you could copy and paste. So if you opened an audio file in a text editor as an ASCII file, copied the text, pasted it in another text field, then saved that file, any bytes that were between 0 and 32 decimal would be missing.
my afternoon project recommendation is to open a jpg or bmp in audacity, cut the first bit off to save the header then apply random audio effects to the rest. you can create really cool trippy glitch art this way
Try it and see. It won’t hurt anything.
I feel like there’s a very large number of people that are afraid of trying things on their computer just to see what happens. And it correlates pretty closely with the type of person that doesn’t know where anything is on their computer.
OP is at least asking questions, and that’s a great step towards learning by yourself.
Eeh, they’ve got a point though. This is the result of accidentally cating an image in TTY:
Fixable with a reboot. Shouldn’t cause issues with any normal text editor, but because it shouldn’t doesn’t mean it necessarily won’t.
Now cat a plain text file to your sound device as it exists in /dev (e.g., /dev/audio). Then do an audio file. You should hear stuff come out of your speakers.
PS. When your terminal looks like that, you should be able to type reset and press enter to fix it without a reboot.
