Python 3 - Encode Decode vs Bytes Str

Question

I am new to python3  coming from python2  and I am a bit confused with unicode fundamentals   I ve read some good posts  that made it all much clearer  however I see there are 2 methods on python 3  that handle encoding and decoding  and I m not sure which one to use   So the idea in python 3 is  that every string is unicode  and can be encoded and stored in bytes  or decoded back into unicode string again   But there are 2 ways to do it  u something  encode  utf-8   will generate b bytes   but so does bytes u something    utf-8     And b bytes  decode  utf-8   seems to do same thing as str b     utf-8     Now my question is  why are there 2 methods that seem to do the same thing  and is either better than the other  and why   I ve been trying to find answer to this on google  but no luck    gt  gt  gt  original    27            gt  gt  gt  type original   lt class  str  gt   gt  gt  gt  encoded   original encode  utf-8    gt  gt  gt  print encoded  b 27 xe5 xb2 x81 xe5 xb0 x91 xe5 xa6 x87 xe7 x94 x9f xe5 xad xa9 xe5 xad x90 xe5 x90 x8e xe5 x8f x98 xe8 x80 x81   gt  gt  gt  type encoded   lt class  bytes  gt   gt  gt  gt  encoded2   bytes original   utf-8    gt  gt  gt  print encoded2  b 27 xe5 xb2 x81 xe5 xb0 x91 xe5 xa6 x87 xe7 x94 x9f xe5 xad xa9 xe5 xad x90 xe5 x90 x8e xe5 x8f x98 xe8 x80 x81   gt  gt  gt  type encoded2   lt class  bytes  gt   gt  gt  gt  print encoded encoded2  b 27 xe5 xb2 x81 xe5 xb0 x91 xe5 xa6 x87 xe7 x94 x9f xe5 xad xa9 xe5 xad x90 xe5 x90 x8e xe5 x8f x98 xe8 x80 x8127 xe5 xb2 x81 xe5 xb0 x91 xe5 xa6 x87 xe7 x94 x9f xe5 xad xa9 xe5 xad x90 xe5 x90 x8e xe5 x8f x98 xe8 x80 x81   gt  gt  gt  decoded   encoded decode  utf-8    gt  gt  gt  print decoded  27           gt  gt  gt  decoded2   str encoded2   utf-8    gt  gt  gt  print decoded2  27           gt  gt  gt  type decoded   lt class  str  gt   gt  gt  gt  type decoded2   lt class  str  gt   gt  gt  gt  print str b 27 xe5 xb2 x81 xe5 xb0 x91 xe5 xa6 x87 xe7 x94 x9f xe5 xad xa9 xe5 xad x90 xe5 x90 x8e xe5 x8f x98 xe8 x80 x81    utf-8    27           gt  gt  gt  print b 27 xe5 xb2 x81 xe5 xb0 x91 xe5 xa6 x87 xe7 x94 x9f xe5 xad xa9 xe5 xad x90 xe5 x90 x8e xe5 x8f x98 xe8 x80 x81  decode  utf-8    27

User · Accepted Answer

Neither is better than the other  they do exactly the same thing  However  using  encode   and  decode   is the more common way to do it  It is also compatible with Python 2

User · Answer

To add to Lennart Regebro s answer There is even the third way that can be used   encoded3   str encode original   utf-8   print encoded3    Anyway  it is actually exactly the same as the first approach  It may also look that the second way is a syntactic sugar for the third approach     A programming language is a means to express abstract ideas formally  to be executed by the machine  A programming language is considered good if it contains constructs that one needs  Python is a hybrid language -- i e  more natural and more versatile than pure OO or pure procedural languages  Sometimes functions are more appropriate than the object methods  sometimes the reverse is true  It depends on mental picture of the solved problem   Anyway  the feature mentioned in the question is probably a by-product of the language implementation design  In my opinion  this is a nice example that show the alternative thinking about technically the same thing   In other words  calling an object method means thinking in terms  let the object gives me the wanted result   Calling a function as the alternative means  let the outer code processes the passed argument and extracts the wanted value    The first approach emphasizes the ability of the object to do the task on its own  the second approach emphasizes the ability of an separate algoritm to extract the data  Sometimes  the separate code may be that much special that it is not wise to add it as a general method to the class of the object

User · Answer

To add to add to the previous answer  there is even a fourth way that can be used  import codecs encoded4   codecs encode original   utf-8   print encoded4

[python] Python 3 - Encode/Decode vs Bytes/Str

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