Python 3's encode() and decode() methods

Question

In Python 3 there are str and bytes types. To convert a bytes type into a str type, one would call the decode() method on an instance and vice versa. I am confused as to why this is, why is it not encode()? As I understand it, internally the actual bytes in memory are being encoded into an encoding (UTF-8 in Python's case).

You can think of encode/decode as serialise/deserialise of unicode objects (which is the str type in Python3) — John La Rooy
– John La Rooy, Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 5:00
By far the best introduction to this subject is Ned Batchelder's PyCon 2012 lecture, "Pragmatic Unicode, or, How Do I Stop the Pain?" (on You Tube). — Kevin J. Chase
– Kevin J. Chase, Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 6:02

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-18 04:49:01Z

4

The bytes are the encoding. You need to decode them in order to get the text they encode. How Python encodes the text as bytes internally is... not your problem.

answered Jun 18, 2015 at 4:49

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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