Convert String to bytes-Python

The goal here is to convert a string into bytes in Python. This is essential for working with binary data or when encoding strings for storage or transmission. For example, given the string "Hello", these methods can convert it into a byte representation like b'Hello'. Let’s explore different methods to accomplish this efficiently.

Using encode()

encode() method is a very straightforward way to convert a string into bytes. It turns a string into a sequence of bytes using a specified encoding format (default is UTF-8).

s = "Hello, World!"
res = s.encode("utf-8")

print(res)

b'Hello, World!'

Explanation: encode() method converts a string to bytes using the specified encoding, here "utf-8", allowing the string to be processed as binary data.

Using bytes constructor

bytes() constructor also converts a string into bytes. This method is very similar to encode(), but it’s slightly longer to write.

s = "Hello, World!"

res = bytes(s, "utf-8")
print(res)

b'Hello, World!'

Explanation: bytes() constructor converts a string to bytes using the specified encoding, here "utf-8", allowing the string to be processed as binary data.

Using bytearray constructor

bytearray() constructor works just like bytes(), but it creates a mutable sequence of bytes. This means you can modify the byte data later, which is different from the immutability of a bytes object.

s = "Hello, World!"
res = bytearray(s, "utf-8")

print(res)

bytearray(b'Hello, World!')

Explanation: bytearray() constructor converts a string to a mutable sequence of bytes using the specified encoding, here "utf-8". This allows the byte data to be modified later.

Using manual ASCII encoding

In this method, we manually convert each character in the string into its ASCII value using the ord() function, then combine them into a byte sequence.

s = "Hello"
res = bytes([ord(char) for char in s])

print(res)

b'Hello'

Explanation: List comprehension converts each character in "Hello" to its ASCII value using ord() and the bytes() constructor then converts these values into a bytes object.

Related Articles:

• Python – Strings encode() method
• bytearray() function – Python
• Python bytes() method