Question

Differentiate between text file and binary file.

Answer 1

Text File:

A text file contains only textual information consisting of alphabets, numbers and other extensions like .txt, .py, .c, .csv, .html, etc. Each byte of a text file represents a character.

Each line of a text file is stored as a sequence of ASCII equivalent of the characters and is terminated by a special character, called the End of Line (EOL).

Binary File:

Binary file consists of data stored as a stream of bytes i.e. as it is stored in computer memory (binary language). No translation occurs in binary file. In binary file no end of line translation. Faster than text file.