Python 2.7 base64.b64decode为什么它返回一个字符串而不是一个字节数组？

Question

I am using Python 2.7 to decode base64 data and I don't understand why base64.b64decode returns a string? How do I get to the binary data that is decoded? I would think base64.b64decode would return a byte array. Here is the link to python docs for base64: http://docs.python.org/2/library/base64.html

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

In 2.xa bytestring is the binary data, represented in a mostly-printable form. And it doesn't require additional modules for support.

Answer 2

The bytearray type is used when we want mutable strings or arrays of bytes.

The b64decode() function uses a str type which is for immutable strings or arrays of bytes in Python 2.7.

Besides not needing mutability, the other reason that b64decode() didn't consider returning a bytearray is that b64decode() is much older than bytearrays -- when the only tool in your toolbox is a str, all problems start to look like str problems ;-)