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 file:
Bam:
http://samtools.sourceforge.net/SAMv1.pdf (from page 12)
sff file (for Ion torrent and 454 files):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/trace.cgi?cmd=show&f=formats&m=doc&s=format#sff
Binary file Editor and Viewer:
