How do I print a bytes string without the b' prefix in Python 3?
>>> print(b'hello') b'hello' 
- related: How to write bytes to a file in Python 3 without knowing the encoding?jfs– jfs2017-09-08 15:17:59 +00:00Commented Sep 8, 2017 at 15:17
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9 Answers
Use decode:
>>> print(b'hello'.decode()) hello 1 Comment
Eric Dand
@ShubhamA. The default value of the
encoding parameter when not set is indeed 'utf-8': docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#bytes.decodeIf the bytes use an appropriate character encoding already; you could print them directly:
sys.stdout.buffer.write(data) or
nwritten = os.write(sys.stdout.fileno(), data) # NOTE: it may write less than len(data) bytes 
Comments
According to the source for bytes.__repr__, the b'' is baked into the method.
One workaround is to manually slice off the b'' from the resulting repr():
>>> x = b'\x01\x02\x03\x04' >>> print(repr(x)) b'\x01\x02\x03\x04' >>> print(repr(x)[2:-1]) \x01\x02\x03\x04 5 Comments
Mateen Ulhaq
Side note: I don't think any of the other answers truly answer the question.
Antoine
I think I would agree: your solution, namely
repr(x)[2:-1], produces a str object that will print as wish. In particular, repr(b'\x01')[2:-1] returns the string \\x01, while decode() will return \x01 which does not work as one would wish with print(). To be even more explicit, print(repr(b'\x01')[2:-1]) will print \x01 while print(b'\x01'.decode()) will not print anything.Antoine
Alternatively,
print(repr(b"\x01".decode()))will print '\x01' (a string including the single quotes ), so that print(repr(b"\x01".decode())[1:-1]) prints \x01 (a string without the single quotes ).
SYK
I was hoping to rid of endless x.encode x.decode nonsense forever in py3 but still need this repr(x)[2:-1] stuff when dealing with encrypted data from py2 in py3... Sad...
Eric Dand
The note that this is because of
bytes.__repr__ is great, but the recommendation of print(repr(x)[2:-1]) is pretty darn ugly! Not a fan of the proposed solution, although this answer is very educational.If the data is in an UTF-8 compatible format, you can convert the bytes to a string.
>>> print(str(b"hello", "utf-8")) hello Optionally, convert to hex first if the data is not UTF-8 compatible (e.g. data is raw bytes).
>>> from binascii import hexlify >>> print(hexlify(b"\x13\x37")) b'1337' >>> print(str(hexlify(b"\x13\x37"), "utf-8")) 1337 >>> from codecs import encode # alternative >>> print(str(encode(b"\x13\x37", "hex"), "utf-8")) 1337 
Comments
To show or print:
<byte_object>.decode("utf-8") To encode or save:
<str_object>.encode('utf-8') 
Comments
I am a little late but for Python 3.9.1 this worked for me and removed the -b prefix:
print(outputCode.decode()) 
Comments
It's so simple... (With that, you can encode the dictionary and list bytes, then you can stringify it using json.dump / json.dumps)
You just need use base64
import base64 data = b"Hello world!" # Bytes data = base64.b64encode(data).decode() # Returns a base64 string, which can be decoded without error. print(data) There are bytes that cannot be decoded by default(pictures are an example), so base64 will encode those bytes into bytes that can be decoded to string, to retrieve the bytes just use
data = base64.b64decode(data.encode()) 
Comments
Use decode() instead of encode() for converting bytes to a string.
>>> import curses >>> print(curses.version.decode()) 2.2 
Comments
i know this has been answered but
encoded = str(encoded).replace('b', '', 1) 
1 Comment
Abhijeet Kushe
Also need to replace quotes.I ended up using this.
str(encoded)[2:-1]