Convert string converted byte back to string

Question

I have some text written in text files, but accidentally they were written in byte format, e.g: b'hello'. When I try to read via python as a text file, I get the output as "b'hello'", but i need "hello". I tried to convert it by:

"b'hello'".decode('utf-8')

But this gives an error as str does not have decode method. Any help regarding this will be appreciated.

Following is an example of how the text files looks:

If you are reading the correct string already... would it work with just removing the preceding b' and ending '? someting like str[2:len(str)-1] — ppanero
– ppanero, Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 8:33
" they were written in byte format" - all that eventually gets written to a file is bytes. The problem lies in the way you read it, and depending on that, Python will convert the binary data to strings, if you let it do it by opening the file in text mode, or present it to you as sequences of bytes if you opened the file in binary mode. It looks like you did the latter. — Thierry Lathuille
– Thierry Lathuille, Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 8:42
@ppanero its not just str and byte has only the difference of b'' there are other characters that need to be converted — Ayush Tiwari
– Ayush Tiwari, Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 11:17

Gcode · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-16 02:50:43Z

1

your_byte_text = b'hello'
output = str(your_byte_text, 'utf-8')
print(output) # output: hello

Mentioned that your_byte_text is real byte data. Because if you run str(your_byte_text) the value will become "b'hello'"

one of the way to retrive string from file.

with open(file_path, 'r') as file:
    data = file.read()
    # the data is pure string like 'hello' already.

edited Mar 16, 2021 at 2:50

answered Mar 15, 2021 at 8:51

Gcode

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2 Comments

Ayush Tiwari Over a year ago

what is have is your_byte_text="b'hello'" and not your_byte_data=b'hello'

Gcode Over a year ago

@AyushTiwari I have no idea about that. so I just post my way to get text string from text file as your reference.

Xyndra · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-15 12:16:13Z

0

Use b"hello" The b shouldn't be in the sting but before the string If you want to convert a string from a file, do exec(f"variable = b"{old_variable}"")

edited Mar 15, 2021 at 12:16

answered Mar 15, 2021 at 11:00

Xyndra

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1 Comment

Ayush Tiwari Over a year ago

When i read from the text file and store it in the variable it is being store in the format variable = "b'hello'"

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