`bytes`

The built-in bytes data type allows you to represent and manipulate immutable sequences of bytes, which are numbers in the range 0 <= x < 256. This data type is particularly useful for handling binary data, encoding and decoding text, file input and output, and network communication:

Python
      
>>> b'Hello, World!'
b'Hello, World!'

>>> b'\x48\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f'
b'Hello'

`bytes` Constructors

Python Syntax
      
    
bytes(source=b"")
bytes(source, encoding)
bytes(source, encoding, errors)

Arguments

Argument	Description	Default Value
`source`	A `bytes` literal, a string, or an iterable of integers	`b""`
`encoding`	The character encoding to use for decoding `source` if it holds a string	Required argument
`errors`	A handler for encoding and decoding errors	`"strict"`

Return Value

Returns a Python bytes object

`bytes` Examples

Creating an empty bytes object:

Python
      
>>> bytes()
b''

Create bytes objects using literals:

Python
      
>>> b'This is a bytes literal with single quotes'
b'This is a bytes literal with single quotes'

>>> b"Another bytes literal, now with double quotes"
b'Another bytes literal, now with double quotes'

Using the class constructor with a string requires specifying an encoding:

Python
      
>>> bytes("Hello, World!", encoding="utf-8")
b'Hello, World!'

Creating a bytes object from an iterable of integers:

Python
      
>>> bytes([72, 101, 108, 108, 111])
b'Hello'

`bytes` Methods

Method	Description
`.count()`	Returns the number of non-overlapping occurrences of a byte or sub-sequence
`.decode()`	Decodes the bytes using a specified encoding
`.endswith()`	Returns True if the byte sequence ends with a specified suffix
`.find()`	Returns the lowest index in the bytes where the sub-sequence is found
`.index()`	Like `find()`, but raises a `ValueError` if the sub-sequence is not found
`.join()`	Concatenates a sequence of bytes or bytearrays with the bytes object as separator
`.replace()`	Returns a copy of the bytes with all occurrences of a sub-sequence replaced
`.split()`	Splits the bytes into a list using a specified separator
`.startswith()`	Returns True if the byte sequence starts with a specified prefix
`.strip()`	Returns a copy of the bytes with leading and trailing whitespace removed

`bytes` Common Use Cases

The most common use cases for the bytes data type include:

Handling binary data in files or network communication
Encoding and decoding text
Working with protocols that require binary data representation

`bytes` Real-World Example

Say that you want to read a binary file and extract specific data. You can use the bytes data type to efficiently handle this task:

Python
      
        
      
    
>>> with open('example.bin', 'rb') as file:
...     data = file.read()
...     print(data[:10])
...
b'\x89PNG\r\n\x1a\n\x00\x00'

In this example, we open a binary file and read its contents into a bytes object. We then print the first 10 bytes to inspect the file’s header. The bytes data type allows us to easily manage and manipulate this binary data.