[Python-3000] base64 - bytes and strings (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Mon Jul 30 06:27:13 CEST 2007


I believe that converting a Unicode string to a base64 encoded form is necessarily a 2-step process.

I think that part is undebated. What is the debate is whether base64.encodestring (which accepts bytes) should produce (unicode) strings, which would then have to be encoded as us-ascii. That would make a process of going from unicode to base64 bytes a three-step process:

tosend = base64.encodestring(data.encode("utf-8")).encode("ascii")

Currently, you can spare the last step if you do want bytes, and need to specify .decode("ascii") if you want strings.

Regards, Martin



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