Why is ByteArray() combining array values? (Python)

Question

>>> bytearray([2,88])
bytearray(b'\x02X')

Why is bytearray() combining them? And why is it turning 88 into ascii (X)? I was expecting two separate values, and 88 to convert to hex (x58)

bytearray(b'\x02,x58)

fferri · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-02 23:22:57Z

1

Because ASCII 88 (capital letter X) is printable, and the behavior of bytes.str() / bytes.repr() is to not encode printable characters.

Just try to print bytearray(range(256)) and you'll see that there is a range of printable characters (from \x20 to \x7e) which do not get displayed as \x##.

Nonetheless, you can input \x58 in a byte sequence, but it will again be displayed as X:

>>> b'\x58'
b'X'

Here's a little trick to print all values encoded to \x## form:

>>> b = bytearray([2,88])
>>> print(''.join('\\x%02x'%x for x in b))
\x02\x58

edited Dec 2, 2018 at 23:22

answered Dec 2, 2018 at 23:16

fferri

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1 Comment

Ethan Shaotran Over a year ago

Ah okay, thanks. So is there a way to take an array: arr = [2,88] and have it turn into: bytearray(b'\x02,x58) using bytearray somehow?

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