[Tutor] byte array conversion question

[Steven D'Aprano]

Bill Allen wrote:
> I have found that there are a couple of ways to convert a byte array to a
> string in Python.   Is there any advantage or disadvantage to either method?
> 
> my_bytes = b'this is a test'
> 
> str(my_bytes,'utf-8')   yields 'this is a test'
> my_bytes.decode('utf-8';)   yeilds 'this is a test'

Not so far as I know. The decode method is a *tiny* bit faster:

 >>> from timeit import Timer
 >>> t1 = Timer("str(my_bytes,'utf-8')", "my_bytes = b'this is a test'")
 >>> t2 = Timer("my_bytes.decode('utf-8')", "my_bytes = b'this is a test'")
 >>> min(t1.repeat())
0.670975923538208
 >>> min(t2.repeat())
0.5184659957885742

Those figures are in seconds, for one million calls. So the actual speed 
difference is about 0.1 of a microsecond, almost always too trivial to 
care about.




-- 
Steven