How To Convert Bytes To Strings In Python?

In this tutorial, I will explain how to convert bytes to strings in Python. As a data scientist working on various projects for clients across the USA, I recently encountered this issue when processing some byte-encoded data from our servers. I researched more about this topic and I will explain several methods to accomplish this, with clear examples.

Table of Contents

Convert Bytes to Strings in Python

Before getting into the conversion methods, let’s clarify the difference between bytes and strings in Python:

Strings are sequences of Unicode characters, like “Hello, John!” or “Main St, New York, NY 10001”. They are used to represent text.
Bytes are sequences of 8-bit integers, often used to represent binary data, like b’\x48\x65\x6C\x6C\x6F’ or b’Main St, New York, NY 10001′. They are used when storing or transmitting data.

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Method 1: Use the decode() Method

The most simple way to convert bytes to strings in Python is by using the decode() method. This method decodes the byte sequence into a string using the specified encoding (default is ‘utf-8’). Here’s an example:

address_bytes = b'123 Main St, Boston, MA 02101' 
address_str = address_bytes.decode('utf-8')
print(address_str)

Output:

123 Main St, Boston, MA 02101

I have executed the above example code and added the screenshot below.

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Method 2: Use the str() Constructor

Another way to convert bytes to string is by using the str() constructor. This works similarly to the decode() method:

name_bytes = b'John Smith'
name_str = str(name_bytes, 'utf-8') 
print(name_str)

Output:

John Smith

I have executed the above example code and added the screenshot below.

How to Convert Bytes to Strings in Python

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Method 3: Use the Codecs Module

Python’s built-in codecs module provides another way to convert bytes to string. This can be useful for more advanced encoding scenarios:

import codecs

city_bytes = b'San Francisco, CA'
city_str = codecs.decode(city_bytes, 'utf-8')
print(city_str)

Output:

San Francisco, CA

I have executed the above example code and added the screenshot below.

Convert Bytes to Strings in Python codecs module

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Handle Encoding Errors

Sometimes, the byte sequence may contain invalid characters for the specified encoding. In such cases, you can pass an optional error parameter to handle these errors:

corrupted_bytes = b'123 Main St, Boston, MA \x8f\x9a\x5c'
address_str = corrupted_bytes.decode('utf-8', errors='replace')
print(address_str)

Output:

123 Main St, Boston, MA ???\

The errors parameter can take values like ‘strict’ (default), ‘ignore’, ‘replace’, etc., to specify how to handle encoding errors.

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Conclusion

In this tutorial, I helped you to learn how to convert bytes to strings. I covered mainly three methods to achieve this task as decode() method, the str() constructor, and the codecs module. I also discussed how to handle encoding errors.