Convert bytes to a string

Question

I'm using this code to get standard output from an external program:

>>> from subprocess import * >>> command_stdout = Popen(['ls', '-l'], stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0] 

The communicate() method returns an array of bytes:

>>> command_stdout b'total 0\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file1\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file2\n' 

However, I'd like to work with the output as a normal Python string. So that I could print it like this:

>>> print(command_stdout) -rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file2 

I thought that's what the binascii.b2a_qp() method is for, but when I tried it, I got the same byte array again:

>>> binascii.b2a_qp(command_stdout) b'total 0\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file1\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file2\n' 

How do I convert the bytes value back to string? I mean, using the "batteries" instead of doing it manually. And I'd like it to be OK with Python 3.

Answer 1

You need to decode the bytes object to produce a string:

>>> b"abcde" b'abcde'  # utf-8 is used here because it is a very common encoding, but you # need to use the encoding your data is actually in. >>> b"abcde".decode("utf-8")  'abcde' 

See: https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#bytes.decode