TO_BINARY¶

TO_BINARY(COLUMN_EXPRESSION)

Casts the input string to binary data. Currently only supports the HEX format. Raises an exception if the input is not a valid hex string: - Must have an even number of characters - All characters must be hexedecimal digits (0-9, a-f case insensitive)

Example:

We are given table1 with columns a and b:

table1 = pd.DataFrame({
    'a': ["AB", "626f646f", "4a2F3132"],
    'b': ["ABC", "ZETA", "#fizz"],
})

upon query

SELECT TO_BINARY(a),
FROM table1

we will get the following output:

    TO_BINARY(a)
0   b'\xab'             -- Binary encoding of the character '¼'
1   b'\x62\x6f\x64\x6f' -- Binary encoding of the string 'bodo'
2   b'\x4a\x2f\x31\x32' -- Binary encoding of the string 'J/12'

Upon query

SELECT TO_BINARY(b)
FROM table1

we will see a value error because all of the values in column b are not valid hex strings: - 'ABC' is 3 characters, which is not an even number - 'ZETA' contains non-hex characters Z and T - '#fizz' is 5 characters, which is not an even number and contains non-hex characters #, i and z