Turn a bytes-like string into actual bytes in Python

Question

Is there a build-in function in python 3 to let me get b from a?

a = '\\xe9\\x82\\xa3'
b = b'\xe9\x82\xa3'

falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-29 07:43:54Z

6

You can use unicode-escape encoding:

>>> a = '\\xe9\\x82\\xa3'
>>> a.encode().decode('unicode-escape').encode('latin1')
b'\xe9\x82\xa3'

>>> import codecs
>>> codecs.decode(a, 'unicode-escape').encode('latin1')
b'\xe9\x82\xa3'

answered Nov 29, 2014 at 7:43

falsetru

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