Decode byte string in txt file - Python 3

Question

there!

I have been looking for an answer for quite a bit, but to no avail... Anyway, I had a numpy ndarray and I saved it in a txt file with ndarray.tostring(), so now in my file I have stuff like

"b'\xae\xc9\x91\xff\x9d\x12\xac\xbf\xeasz\xfal\t\xba\xbf\xa18x\xf1\x1bF'"

Now I want to decode that so I can apply ndarray.fromstring(byte_string).

How can I achieve it? I already used bytes(byte_string, 'utf-8'), then decode, removing the b and ', etc...

Thanks a lot!

EDIT: For the record, the solution was using b = ast.literal_eval(byte_string). Thank you, Andy!

This is not valid utf-8...

Andy Hayden
– Andy Hayden

2017-11-08 02:48:13 +00:00
Commented Nov 8, 2017 at 2:48 — Andy Hayden
– Andy Hayden, Commented Nov 8, 2017 at 2:48

Andy Hayden · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-08 02:46:38Z

1

Perhaps you want to decode it directly from bytes:

In [11]: b = b'\xae\xc9\x91\xff\x9d\x12\xac\xbf\xeasz\xfal\t\xba\xbf\xa18x\xf1\x1bF'

In [12]: np.fromstring(b, dtype=np.uint8)
Out[12]:
array([174, 201, 145, 255, 157,  18, 172, 191, 234, 115, 122, 250, 108,
         9, 186, 191, 161,  56, 120, 241,  27,  70], dtype=uint8)

answered Nov 8, 2017 at 2:46

Andy Hayden

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3 Comments

Andy Hayden Over a year ago

I say this mainly as this bytes are not valid utf-8 (they don't decode)

David Guevara Over a year ago

The issue is that in the text file is already saved as "b'\xae\xc9\x91\xff\x9d\x12\xac\xbf\xeasz\xfal\t\xba\xbf\xa18x\xf1\x1bF'", so when I save it in a variable, it doesn't store it as a BYTES object, but a string.

Andy Hayden Over a year ago

@david you can read it as bytes with b = ast.literal_eval(open(file_name).read())

Genuine · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-08 02:40:55Z

1

Your string is BYTE object. str(b'','utf8')

edited Nov 8, 2017 at 2:40

answered Nov 8, 2017 at 2:34

Genuine

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2 Comments

yash Over a year ago

I believe it should be utf-8

David Guevara Over a year ago

The issue is that in the text file is already saved as "b'\xae\xc9\x91\xff\x9d\x12\xac\xbf\xeasz\xfal\t\xba\xbf\xa18x\xf1\x1bF'", so when I save it in a variable, it doesn't store it as a BYTES object, but a string.

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