"convert" string to bytes without changing data (encoding)

[Prasad, Ramit]

> As it seems, this would be far easier with python 2.x. With python 3
> and its strict distinction between "str" and "bytes", things gets
> syntactically pretty awkward and error-prone (something as innocently
> looking like "s=s+'/'" hidden in a rarely reached branch and a
> seemingly correct program will crash with a TypeError 2 years
> later ...)

Just a small note as you are new to Python, string concatenation can
be expensive (quadratic time). The Python (2.x and 3.x) idiom for 
frequent string concatenation is to append to a list and then join 
them like the following (linear time). 

>>>lst = [ 'Hi,' ]
>>>lst.append( 'how' )
>>>lst.append( 'are' )
>>>lst.append( 'you?' )
>>>sentence = ' '.join( lst ) # use a space separating each element
>>>print sentence
Hi, how are you?

You can use join on an empty string, but then they will not be 
separated by spaces.

>>>sentence = ''.join( lst ) # empty string so no separation
>>>print sentence
Hi,howareyou?

You can use any string as a separator, length does not matter.

>>>sentence = '@-Q'.join( lst )
>>>print sentence
Hi, at -Qhow@-Qare at -Qyou?


Ramit


Ramit Prasad | JPMorgan Chase Investment Bank | Currencies Technology
712 Main Street | Houston, TX 77002
work phone: 713 - 216 - 5423

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