Best way to convert string to bytes in Python

Question

There appear to be two different ways to convert a string to bytes, 

Which of these methods would be better or more Pythonic? Or is it just a matter of personal preference?

b = bytes(mystring, 'utf-8')

b = mystring.encode('utf-8')

Answer 1

So bytes can do much more than just encode a string. It's Pythonic that it would allow you to call the constructor with any type of source parameter that makes sense.

For encoding a string, I think that some_string.encode(encoding) is more Pythonic than using the constructor, because it is the most self documenting -- "take this string and encode it with this encoding" is clearer than bytes(some_string, encoding) -- there is no explicit verb when you use the constructor.

Answer 2

 Using bytes(str, enc)

String can be converted to bytes using the generic bytes function. This function internally points to CPython Library which implicitly calls the encode function for converting the string to specified encoding.

# Python code to demonstrate

# convert string to byte 

# Using bytes(str, enc)

  

# initializing string 

test_string = "EDUREKA is best"

  

# printing original string 

print("The original string : " + str(test_string))

  

# Using bytes(str, enc)

# convert string to byte 

res = bytes(test_string, 'utf-8')

  

# print result

print("The byte converted string is  : " + str(res) + ", type : " + str(type(res)))

Output :

The original string : EDUREKA is best
The byte converted string is  : b' EDUREKA is best', type : <class 'bytes'>

Answer 3

We can use the built-in Bytes class in Python to convert a string to bytes: simply pass the string as the first input of the constructor of the Bytes class and then pass the encoding as the second argument.

Printing the object shows a user-friendly textual representation, but the data contained in it is​ in bytes.

string = "Hello World"


# string with encoding 'utf-8'

arr = bytes(string, 'utf-8')

arr2 = bytes(string, 'ascii')


print(arr,'\n')


# actual bytes in the the string

for byte in arr:

    print(byte, end=' ')

print("\n")

for byte in arr2:

    print(byte, end=' ')