And Dick - NO IT DOES NOT.

As I understand, certain number of bits (Maybe 16 or 24) in this stream defines the binary value of a number. Nothing to do with characters.

If you have saved it in a file, it will be a DATA file, not a TEXT file. (even if it has the extension .txt)

Interpreting the characters as ASCII, as a program like NOTEPAD would do, is meaningless. That's what John is explaining, though in more words.