Many times bioinformatician needs to parse binary files like bam and sff. Advantage of binary files is that they occupy less space in memory with maximum information content.
Link for those who looking for structure of Bam and sff...
Thanks Archana for such a useful links. I found this link useful as well for beginners, where user can find some of the free books.
http://www.perl.org/books/library.html