I don't know why I get two backslashes (python)

Question

t = '.EA.B2.80.EB.A7.88'

t = t.replace('.','\\x').lower()

string1 = b"\xea\xb2\x80\xeb\xa7\x88"

print(string1.decode("utf-8"))

string2 = bytes(t, "utf-8")

print(string2)

print(string2.decode("utf-8"))

String1 returned the decoded value I wanted, but string2 returned two backslashes. I think string1 and string2 are not different but wonder why string2 returns two backslashes. Can anybody answer this? Thank you for reading!

Answer 1

In string1 , the backslashes are part of the syntax of a bytes literal, used to produce the correct bytes in the resulting value.

You are adding literal backslashes to the value of the string t .

I'm not sure this is the best solution, but you can convert t to a sequence of int values which can be passed to bytes .

string2 = bytes(int(x, 16) for x in t.strip(".").split("."))

Update: there is something simpler:

string2 = bytes.fromhex(t.replace(".", ""))