1. Bytes and str should be clearly distinguished. Strings are text data, bytes are binary data, and cannot be spliced ??directly. .encode() and .decode() are required to convert; 2. Add the 'b' pattern to process bytes when reading and writing files, such as 'rb' or 'wb' to avoid parsing errors; 3. The struct module is used to package and unpack structured binary data, pay attention to the matching of byte order and format; 4. Bytearray is more flexible than bytes, suitable for frequent modification of binary content.
Processing binary data and bytes is actually quite common in Python, especially in scenarios such as network communication, file operations, or encryption and decryption. Python provides several built-in types and modules to process bytes and binary data, which is quite convenient to use, but some details are easy to be confused, especially when newbies are new to it.

Below are some of the more critical points in actual use, which can help you understand more clearly how to deal with bytes.

1. The difference between bytes
and str
must be clearly distinguished
In Python 3, string ( str
) is text data, and bytes
is binary data. They look similar, but they cannot be mixed directly.
For example:

s = "hello" # str type b = b"hello" # bytes type
If you try to splice the two, an error will be reported:
sb # Error: can't concat str and bytes
suggestion:
- If you need to convert from a string to byte, remember to use the
.encode()
method, which is UTF-8 encoding by default. - In turn, to return the string from bytes, use
.decode()
.
s.encode() # str -> bytes b.decode() # bytes -> str
2. Pay attention to the mode when reading and writing files
When you open the file, if you want to process the original bytes, remember to add 'b'
mode. for example:
with open('data.bin', 'rb') as f: content = f.read()
Here 'rb'
means to read in binary mode, and the returned type is bytes
. If 'b'
is not added, the default is text mode. Python will try to parse the content in some encoding, which may cause errors, especially non-text files (such as images or compressed packages).
Common practices:
- When reading and writing binary files such as pictures, videos, and audio, you must use binary mode.
- Data transmitted on the network (such as content received by socket) is also bytes, and should not be treated as a string.
3. Use struct to process structured binary data
Sometimes the binary data you get is in a fixed format, such as the first 4 bytes are integers, the next 8 are floating point numbers, etc. At this time, you can use struct
module to package/unpack.
import struct # Pack two integers and a floating point number data = struct.pack('>IIf', 100, 200, 3.14) # Unpack back values ??= struct.unpack('>IIf', data)
In the example above:
-
>II
represents unsigned integers (4 bytes each) of two large endian sequences -
f
means a float (4 bytes)
Notice:
- The byte order (big-endian or little-endian) must be determined based on the protocol or documentation.
- The format string must match the actual data length, otherwise unpack will error.
4. bytes is immutable, bytearray is more flexible
bytes
is immutable, just like a string. If you need to frequently modify binary data, you can consider using bytearray
.
b = b'hello' ba = bytearray(b) ba[0] = 72 # Modify the first byte to 'H' print(ba) # Output: bytearray(b'Hello')
This feature is useful when constructing network packets or performing data transformation.
Basically that's it. At first, you may think bytes is very abstract, but as long as you remember that it is the representation of "raw data", and combined with encode/decode, struct, and bytearray, it will not be that difficult to process.
The above is the detailed content of Working with Binary Data and Bytes in Python. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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