How to Convert Bytearray to String in Python

1. Convert bytearray to string With the bytes() Function in Python
2. Convert bytearray to string With the bytearray.decode() Function in Python

You can use two primary methods to convert a bytearray into a String in Python: bytes() and bytearray.decode(). In this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can use these functions as methods for this special conversion.

Convert bytearray to string With the bytes() Function in Python

If we have a bytearray containing string characters with the utf-8 encoding and want to convert that array into a string variable, we can use the built-in bytes() function in Python.

The bytes() function returns an immutable bytes object that can then be stored inside a string variable. The following code snippet demonstrates how we can convert a bytearray to a string with the bytes() function.

b = bytearray("test", encoding="utf-8")
str1 = bytes(b)
print(str1)

Output:

b"test"

We converted the bytearray object b into a string variable str1 with the bytes() function in the code above. First, we encoded the text test with a utf-8 encoding inside an object of bytearray. We then converted the bytearray to string with the bytes() function and stored the result inside the string variable str1.

In the end, we printed the data inside the str1 variable. The output shows that this process adds a b object at the start of our original data and then encloses the data inside single quotes. This problem is addressed in the method discussed next.

Convert bytearray to string With the bytearray.decode() Function in Python

As we can see, the bytes() function converts a bytearray to a string but adds additional data to the original string. This problem can be solved by string manipulation, but it is a cumbersome process. The bytearray.decode() function automatically does that for us. This method decodes the data originally encoded inside the bytearray.

The following code snippet demonstrates how we can convert a bytearray to string with the bytearray.decode() function.

b = bytearray("test", encoding="utf-8")
str1 = b.decode()
print(str1)

Output:

test

We converted the bytearray object b into a string variable str1 with the b.decode() function in the code above. First, we encoded the text test with a utf-8 encoding inside an object of bytearray. We then converted the bytearray to string with the b.decode() function and stored the result inside the string variable str1. In the end, we printed the data inside the str1 variable. The output shows that this process does not add any additional data to our originally encoded data.

From the demonstrations above, it is clear that the bytearray.decode() method is far superior to the byte() method for converting a bytearray object into a string variable.