Python: How to decode (utf-8) bytearray object in string format back into string?

Question

I have a list of data in form:

myList = ["bytearray(b'hi')", ...]

something like that.

I want to take each value in the list and convert into plain string form. So the given example should output :

hi

I know you do something like this:

data = bytearray(b'hi')
string = data.decode('UTF-8')

I am struggling with converting the initial string into a bytearray object to decode it back into the string. Any help?

how did you create this list ? It seems you converted all to strings. Maybe you should change code which creates this list - and stop converting to string. Now you may have to use eval("bytearray(b'hi')") to convert it back from string to bytesarray. eval("bytearray(b'hi')").decode('UTF-8') — furas
– furas, Commented Jun 12, 2021 at 2:18

ThePyGuy · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-12 03:23:28Z

1

use eval to first convert the list items into bytearray object then call decode to convert bytearray object back to string.

[eval(each).decode('utf-8') for each in myList]

#output:
['hi']

answered Jun 12, 2021 at 3:23

ThePyGuy

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