python - convert binary data to utf-8

Question

_f = open("c:/go-next.png", "rb")
data = _f.read()
_f.close()
data.encode("utf-8")

# Error: UnicodeDecodeError: file <maya console> line 1: ascii # 

As you see I open a image file, and the data is type. But I have to convert it to utf-8. Maybe binary data has some extra char (or not), it conflict with conversion. Is there any way to solve it?

Answer 1

You can always map a str to unicode using the latin-1 codec. Once you have a unicode, you can always encode it in utf-8:

data.decode('latin-1').encode("utf-8")

Answer 2

Text encodings only apply to text. Do not attempt to use them on binary data.