CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonstringtype-conversionbytepython-2.x
kefete
kefete

Reputation: 33

How to convert Strings into Bytes in Python2?

I'm trying to convert a string into bytes and those bytes must be in a string type. I know how to do that in pyhon3, it is pretty straight forward, but in python2 I'm just lost :(

I've tried the encode() function in python2 but it doesn't seem to work, I've read there is no such thing as byte type in python2 so that maybe the case why I'm failing.

Anyways, I wrote this code in python3 and it is working flawlessy:

>>> a="hey"
>>> b=bytes(a, 'utf-8')
>>> print(b)
b'hey'
>>> type(b)
<class 'bytes'>
>>> c=''
>>> for i in b:
...     c+=str(i)+" "
...
>>>
>>> print (c)
104 101 121

Instead with python2 I've tryed, of course bytes(a, 'utf-8') but it's saying str() takes exactly one argument (2 given). Then I've tryed encode() and bytearray() but no luck with those either.

If you have any hints on how to get the representing bytes 104 101 121 of ehy in python2, or if you know for sure that this "conversion" is not possible please let me know.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2986

Answers (1)

blhsing
blhsing

Reputation: 107134

There's no need for such a conversion in Python 2, since bytes is just an alias to str in Python 2.

According to the documentation:

Python 2.6 adds bytes as a synonym for the str type, and it also supports the b'' notation.

The 2.6 str differs from 3.0’s bytes type in various ways; most notably, the constructor is completely different. In 3.0, bytes([65, 66, 67]) is 3 elements long, containing the bytes representing ABC; in 2.6, bytes([65, 66, 67]) returns the 12-byte string representing the str() of the list.

The primary use of bytes in 2.6 will be to write tests of object type such as isinstance(x, bytes). This will help the 2to3 converter, which can’t tell whether 2.x code intends strings to contain either characters or 8-bit bytes; you can now use either bytes or str to represent your intention exactly, and the resulting code will also be correct in Python 3.0.

If you want the Python 3 behavior of bytes in Python 2 in terms of being able to iterate through the bytes as integers, you can convert the string to bytearray instead (just keep in mind that bytearray, unlike str and bytes, is mutable):

>>> a = 'hey'
>>> b = bytearray(a)
>>> c = ''
>>> for i in b:
...     c += str(i) + ' '
...
>>> print(c)
104 101 121

Alternatively, you can use the ord function to convert each character to its ordinal number:

>>> for c in 'hey':
...     print ord(c)
...
104
101
121

Upvotes: 1

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