python - What does the 'b' character do in front of a string literal ...
A prefix of 'b' or 'B' is ignored in Python 2; it indicates that the literal should become a bytes literal in Python 3 (e.g. when code is automatically converted with 2to3).
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>>> b'\xEF\xBB\xBF' + 'Text with a UTF-8 BOM'Traceback (most recent call last):File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>TypeError: can't concat bytes to strUnicode & Character Encodings in Python: A Painless Guide
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Nov 11, 2023 · When placed before a string literal like u"Hello world", the "u" prefix in Python specifies that the string should be interpreted as Unicode. This provides a way to handle text with international …
Unicode and character encodings - Python Basics
Dec 21, 2025 · Encoding Latin letters in UTF-8 and then decoding them in UTF-16 resulted in a text that also contains characters from the Chinese, Japanese or …
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Unraveling the Mysterious "u" in Python - CodeRivers
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Effect of 'b' character in front of a string literal in Python
Jul 23, 2025 · Byte strings are shown with a b prefix and surrounded by single or double quotes. Strings are Unicode by default and are human-readable. Strings are converted to bytes, using encoding. There …