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Byte Objects Vs String in Python

Byte objects in Python 3 are sequences of bytes similar to unicode objects in Python 2. Byte objects are machine readable while strings are human readable. Encoding converts strings to bytes for storage while decoding converts bytes to strings. Methods like encode() and decode() using encodings like ASCII and UTF-8 perform these conversions.

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Shubham Rawat
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27 views2 pages

Byte Objects Vs String in Python

Byte objects in Python 3 are sequences of bytes similar to unicode objects in Python 2. Byte objects are machine readable while strings are human readable. Encoding converts strings to bytes for storage while decoding converts bytes to strings. Methods like encode() and decode() using encodings like ASCII and UTF-8 perform these conversions.

Uploaded by

Shubham Rawat
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Byte Objects vs String in Python

In Python 2, both str and bytes are the same typeByte objects whereas in Python 3 Byte objects,
defined in Python 3 are “sequence of bytes” and similar to “unicode” objects from Python 2.
However, there are many differences in strings and Byte objects. Some of them are depicted
below:
`
 Byte objects are sequence of Bytes, whereas Strings are sequence of characters.
 Byte objects are in machine readable form internally, Strings are only in  human
readable form.
 Since Byte objects are machine readable, they can be directly stored on the disk.
Whereas, Stringsneed encoding before which they can be stored on disk.

There are methods to convert a byte object to String and String to byte objects.

Encoding

PNG, JPEG, MP3, WAV, ASCII, UTF-8 etc are different forms of encodings. An encoding is a format
to represent audio, images, text, etc in bytes. Converting Strings to byte objects is termed as
encoding. This is necessary so that the text can be stored on disk using mapping
using ASCII or UTF-8 encoding techniques.
This task is achieved using encode(). It take encoding technique as argument. Default
technique is “UTF-8” technique.
# Python code to demonstate String encoding

 
# initialising a String

a = 'DrinkandDrive'
# initialising a byte object

c = b'DrinkandDrive'

 
# using encode() to encode the String

# encoded version of a is stored in d

# using ASCII mapping

d = a.encode('ASCII')

 
# checking if a is converted to bytes or not

if (d==c):

    print ("Encoding successful")

else : print ("Encoding Unsuccessful")

Similarly, Decoding is process to convert a  Byte object to String. It is


implemented using decode() . A byte string can be decoded back into a character
string, if you know which encoding was used to encode it. Encoding and
Decoding are inverse processes.
# Python code to demonstate Byte Decoding
 
# initialising a String
a = 'DrinkandDrive'
 
# initialising a byte object
c = b'DrinkandDrive'
 
# using decode() to decode the Byte object
# decoded version of c is stored in d
# using ASCII mapping
d = c.decode('ASCII')
 
# checking if c is converted to String or not
if (d==a):
    print ("Decoding successful")
else : print ("Decoding Unsuccessful")

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