binary file?

[clslesnick]

Is this a binary file? I can't get python to open it.

[mbpakalin]

Nope, it'a JSON file.

[abscondment]

Here is the issue: it is a JSON file, but the encoding is unusable for most *nix tooling.

$ file countriesToCities.json 
countriesToCities.json: Little-endian UTF-16 Unicode English text, with very long lines, with no line terminators
$ less countriesToCities.json 
"countriesToCities.json" may be a binary file.  See it anyway?