Python Convert bytes to a String

This article is created to cover a program in Python that converts bytes to a string. The question is, write a Python program to convert bytes to string. Answer to this question, is the program given below.

The program given below defines a bytes object named x and then prints the value and its type. Then uses the decode() method to convert the bytes object to a string object and then prints the value and the type again of the same variable:

x = b'fresherearth'
print(x)
print(type(x))

x = x.decode()
print(x)
print(type(x))

The snapshot given below shows the sample output produced by above Python program:

But the problem is, when the bytes does not contains UTF-8 encoded data, then you need to specify the same decoding method, that was used to encode the data. For example, in the following program, the variable x contains the bytes object encoded with UTF-16, therefore while decoding into string, we need to use the same UTF-16 decoding:

x = b'\xff\xfec\x00o\x00d\x00e\x00s\x00c\x00r\x00a\x00c\x00k\x00e\x00r\x00'
print(x)
print(type(x))

x = x.decode("UTF-16")
print(x)
print(type(x))

Here is its sample output:

bytes to String in Python

Here is the last program of this article, created to allow user to enter the string. The string gets converted to bytes with utf-8 encoding, and then bytes gets converted to string again. Same thing done using utf-16 encoding and decoding:

print("Enter the String: ", end="")
x = input()

print("\nOriginal String:", x)
x = bytes(x, "utf-8")
print("bytes (with utf-8):", x)
x = x.decode("utf-8")
print("Back to the Original String:", x)
x = bytes(x, "utf-16")
print("bytes (with utf-16):", x)
x = x.decode("utf-16")
print("Again Back to the Original String:", x)

The sample run of above program with user input Python is shown in the snapshot given below:

Python Online Test