String

Using "String" as the format specification, Import and Export can represent any file as a sequence of ordinary or special characters.

Background & Context

- Arbitrary binary data represented as a Wolfram Language string.
- Used for importing or exporting entire raw binary data.

Import["file","String"] imports a file as a raw string, representing each byte of the file as the character corresponding to FromCharacterCode[byte].
Export["file",str,"String"] exports a Wolfram Language string of characters to a binary file. Characters with an encoding greater than 255 are converted to their ASCII representation before exporting.
The format "String" must be explicitly specified.
ExportString[expr,"format"] and Import[Export["tmp",expr,"format"],"String"] return the same expression.
Import["file","String"] reads any binary file, representing its raw content as a Wolfram Language string object.
Export["file",str,"String"] exports a Wolfram Language string to a file.
No character encoding transformations are performed when importing or exporting as "String".
Export["file",expr,"String"] exports a textual representation of expr.
See the following reference pages for full general information:

	Import, Export	import from or export to a file
	CloudImport, CloudExport	import from or export to a cloud object
	ImportString, ExportString	import from or export to a string
	ImportByteArray, ExportByteArray	import from or export to a byte array

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Read an arbitrary binary file and return it as a raw Wolfram Language string:

Wolfram Language code: s = Import["ExampleData/ocelot.jpg", "String"];

Show the first bytes of the result, which contain unprintable characters:

Wolfram Language code: StringTake[s, 120]

Convert the string that represents the file "ocelot.jpg" to graphics:

Wolfram Language code: ImportString[s]

Import binary data and compute an MD5 checksum:

Wolfram Language code: IntegerString[Hash[Import["ExampleData/ocelot.jpg", "String"], "MD5"], 16, 32]

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