See Binary-to-text encoding for more on this subject. The increased size may be countered by lower-level link compression, as the resulting text data will have about as much less entropy as it has increased size, so the actual data transferred in this scenario would likely be very close to the size of the original binary data. Encoding the data has the disadvantage of increasing the file size during the transfer (for example, using Base64 will increase the file's size by approximately 30%), as well as requiring translation back into binary after receipt.

To send binary files through certain systems (such as email) that do not allow all data values, they are often translated into a plain text representation (using, for example, Base64). If a binary file does not contain any headers, it may be called a flat binary file. The leading bytes of the header would contain text like GIF87a or GIF89a that can identify the binary as a GIF file. For example, a GIF file can contain multiple images, and headers are used to identify and describe each block of image data. The header often contains a signature or magic number which can identify the format. Some binary files contain headers, blocks of metadata used by a computer program to interpret the data in the file. – in short, any type of file content whatsoever. But binary files can also mean that they contain images, sounds, compressed versions of other files, etc. Compiled computer programs are typical examples indeed, compiled applications are sometimes referred to, particularly by programmers, as binaries. Binary files typically contain bytes that are intended to be interpreted as something other than text characters. Binary files are usually thought of as being a sequence of bytes, which means the binary digits ( bits) are grouped in eights.

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