Python binary string representation

Question

can anyone please help me with following issue:

I have a str1 defined locally as str1 = 'CV\xca\x86\x11\x85\x01\xc8' and str2 received from another layer of code:

print str2 gives 'CV\xca\x86\x11\x85\x01\xc8' so they look identical, however:

print binascii.hexlify(str1) gives 4356ca86118501c8 or INT: 4852288325706645960

but for str2

print binascii.hexlify(str2) gives 43565c7863615c7838365c7831315c7838355c7830315c786338 or int 108206947078930905153039906183652663420044626270557263434900280

The problem seems to be probably different encoding where

print chardet.detect(str1) gives me my local encoding: {'confidence': 0.73, 'language': '', 'encoding': 'Windows-1252'}

print chardet.detect(str2) gives {'confidence': 1, 'language': '', 'encoding': 'ascii'}

How can I modify the str2 to get the same hex or int values from it like for str1?

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-19 14:36:04Z

1

You have a string with literal backslashes, 'x' characters and hex digits:

>>> from binascii import unhexlify
>>> unhexlify('43565c7863615c7838365c7831315c7838355c7830315c786338')
'CV\\xca\\x86\\x11\\x85\\x01\\xc8'

The representation of the string doubles the backslashes, so you can reproduce the value. The representation of the other string has no such doubling, because the \xhh sequences each form a single character:

>>> unhexlify('4356ca86118501c8')
'CV\xca\x86\x11\x85\x01\xc8'

Compare the individual characters:

>>> 'CV\xca\x86\x11\x85\x01\xc8'[2]
'\xca'
>>> 'CV\\xca\\x86\\x11\\x85\\x01\\xc8'[2]
'\\'

You can decode escape sequences with the string_escape codec:

>>> from binascii import hexlify
>>> 'CV\\xca\\x86\\x11\\x85\\x01\\xc8'.decode('string_escape')
'CV\xca\x86\x11\x85\x01\xc8'
>>> hexlify('CV\\xca\\x86\\x11\\x85\\x01\\xc8'.decode('string_escape'))
'4356ca86118501c8'

edited Nov 19, 2017 at 14:36

answered Nov 19, 2017 at 14:26

Martijn Pieters

1.1m326 gold badges4.2k silver badges3.4k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Python binary string representation

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related