How do I convert a Python 3 byte-string variable into a regular string? [duplicate]

I have read in an XML email attachment with

bytes_string=part.get_payload(decode=False)

The payload comes in as a byte string, as my variable name suggests.

I am trying to use the recommended Python 3 approach to turn this string into a usable string that I can manipulate.

The example shows:

str(b'abc','utf-8')

How can I apply the b (bytes) keyword argument to my variable bytes_string and use the recommended approach?

The way I tried doesn't work:

str(bbytes_string, 'utf-8')

Solution 1:

You had it nearly right in the last line. You want

str(bytes_string, 'utf-8')

because the type of bytes_string is bytes, the same as the type of b'abc'.

Call decode() on a bytes instance to get the text which it encodes.

str = bytes.decode()