Working with Bytes in Python

In this post, we'll explore how to use bytes in Python.

Bytes are sequences of 8-bit integers, commonly used to represent binary data or text encoded in a specific character encoding. In Python, bytes can be created using the bytes or bytearray constructors, or by prefixing a string literal with the letter b:

# Using the bytes constructor
data = bytes([72, 101, 108, 108, 111])
print(data)

# Output: b'Hello'

# Using the bytearray constructor
data = bytearray([72, 101, 108, 108, 111])
print(data)

# Output: bytearray(b'Hello')

# Using a bytes literal
data = b"Hello"
print(data)

# Output: b'Hello'

Bytes can be encoded and decoded using various character encodings, such as UTF-8 or ASCII. The encode() method can be used to encode a string into bytes using a specified encoding, and the decode() method can be used to decode bytes into a string using a specified encoding:

# Encoding a string into bytes
text = "Hello, world!"
data = text.encode(encoding="utf-8")
print(data)

# Output: b'Hello, world!'

# Decoding bytes into a string
data = b"Hello, world!"
text = data.decode(encoding="utf-8")
print(text)

# Output: Hello, world!

Python also provides the base64 module for encoding and decoding binary data using Base64. The b64encode() function can be used to encode binary data into a Base64-encoded string, and the b64decode() function can be used to decode a Base64-encoded string into binary data:

import base64

# Encoding binary data into a Base64-encoded string
data = b"Hello, world!"
encoded_data = base64.b64encode(s=data)
print(encoded_data)

# Output: b'SGVsbG8sIHdvcmxkIQ=='

# Decoding a Base64-encoded string into binary data
encoded_data = b"SGVsbG8sIHdvcmxkIQ=="
data = base64.b64decode(s=encoded_data)
print(data)

# Output: b'Hello, world!'

To remove the b character from the output of a bytes object, you can decode it into a string using the decode() method:

data = b"Hello, world!"
text = data.decode(encoding="utf-8")
print(text)

# Output: Hello, world!

In conclusion, bytes are a powerful tool for representing and manipulating binary data in Python. With the ability to encode and decode bytes using various character encodings, as well as encode and decode binary data using Base64, you'll be able to work with binary data in a wide variety of applications.