You can open .DAT files that contain text, with text editors, like Notepad, Notepad++, VS Code, etc. But it is not possible to know what contains in a DAT file.

So I have a program in Python for use on a Linux machine that's dealing with binary data flowing through what may be a Linux FIFO.I'm using Avinash Kak's BitVector to modify the data as it goes ...

You can corrupt files of different types for testing or other purposes on a Windows 11/10 PC using any of these easy methods.