How to convert string to binary?

I am in need of a way to get the binary representation of a string in python. e.g.

st = "hello world"
toBinary(st)

Is there a module of some neat way of doing this?

Answers

You can convert a string to its binary representation in Python using built-in functions like bin() and ord(). Here's a simple way to achieve this:

Example of converting a string to its binary representation:

def toBinary(string):
    return ' '.join(format(ord(char), '08b') for char in string)

# Example usage:
st = "hello world"
binary_representation = toBinary(st)
print(binary_representation)

How it works:

1. ord(char) converts each character in the string to its ASCII value.
2. format(..., '08b') converts the ASCII value to its binary equivalent, ensuring that the binary string is 8 bits long (padded with leading zeros if necessary).
3. ' '.join(...) combines the binary representations of each character into a single string, with spaces separating the binary numbers for readability.

Output for "hello world":

01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100

This approach is neat, avoids external modules, and works for any string.