Python String encode method

Question

In Python, there is an encode method in unicode strings to encode from unicode to byte string. There is a decode method in string to do the reverse.

But I'm confused what the encode method in string for?

Take a look at this presentation 'Unicode in Python, Completely Demystified' farmdev.com/talks/unicode — rubayeet
– rubayeet, Commented Mar 3, 2011 at 6:47

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-03 06:48:32Z

10

It's useful for non-text codecs.

>>> 'Hello, world!'.encode('hex')
'48656c6c6f2c20776f726c6421'
>>> 'Hello, world!'.encode('base64')
'SGVsbG8sIHdvcmxkIQ==\n'
>>> 'Hello, world!'.encode('zlib')
'x\x9c\xf3H\xcd\xc9\xc9\xd7Q(\xcf/\xcaIQ\x04\x00 ^\x04\x8a'

answered Mar 3, 2011 at 6:48

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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2 Comments

Dzinx Over a year ago

Wow, it even works if the encoded string is incompatible with the default encoding! That must mean it doesn't always decode the string to unicode first...

amit Over a year ago

Ok, so looks like it'll decode to unicode if we encode to one of the character encodings. Strange.

Petri Lehtinen · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-03 06:47:13Z

5

It first decodes to Unicode using the default encoding, then encodes back to a byte string.

>>> import sys
>>> sys.getdefaultencoding()
'ascii'
>>> sys.setdefaultencoding('latin-1')
>>> '\xc4'.encode('utf-8')
'\xc3\x84'

Here, '\xc4' is Latin-1 for Ä and '\xc3\x84' is UTF-8 for Ä.

answered Mar 3, 2011 at 6:47

Petri Lehtinen

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