How to open a .bin file coming from ncbi SNP database?

Question

[adonisgamaliel]

I am not familiar with the .bin extension and I am looking to work with the database on ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/snp/organisms/human_9606_b146_GRCh38p2/ASN1_bin/

I am looking to work with this data on either R or Python.

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

It's in binary ASN1

some tools like DataTool http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/data_specs/NCBI_data_conversion.html allow to convert asn1 to text.

IMHO, for SNP it's easier to work with the XML files.