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I've really tried to figure out how to use these methods properly, but in the end, the only successful strategy I've found essentially boils down to randomly sp

I've really tried to figure out how to use these methods properly, but in the end, the only successful strategy I've found essentially boils down to randomly sprinkling encodes and decodes throughout my code until errors stop happening. Half the time I end up using an encode where my interpretation of the documentation suggested a decode would be required, or vice versa. (This is in Python 2. I haven't tried Python 3 yet since I don't do much Python coding these days.)

andreasvc 11y ago
That's not the proper way. You should rarely need encode/decode if you make sure everything within Python is unicode. You ensure this by being specifying the encoding when getting data from external sources such as files, the network, or external libraries.
- rcthompson 11y ago
  Of course I'm well aware this isn't the proper way to do it. I'm just saying it's the only way I've found that is successful with any degree of regularity. I've tried following the documentation as best I can, but like I said, half the time an encode ends up working where I thought I needed a decode or vice versa.
auxym 11y ago
Python 3 really does help with this. You rarely need to use encode and decode, it's done automatically when opening a file in text mode. You do have to specify the encoding you want though.
takeda 11y ago
This is how to look at it. First you need to think of text and binary (bytes) as two distinct types. The text most of the times is how you interact with user, so things that you will display to the user, or what user enters to you. Now, the text is stored in unicode (how, it's not our concern, Python abstracts it from us), the bytes is representation how it's stored in files, send over a network etc. Now if you need to store text in a file, or send over network you need to encode it (most of the time as UTF-8), if you receive data which supposed to be text you decode it. It might be helpful to think of a text as a sound and bytes as mp3. You encode sound as mp3 to store it in a file, and when you want to play it back you decode it. There are some things can cause a confusion. For example if you write text to a file, python will automatically apply the conversion. Things like that are there so you don't have to do the conversion every single time.

andreasvc 11y ago

That's not the proper way. You should rarely need encode/decode if you make sure everything within Python is unicode. You ensure this by being specifying the encoding when getting data from external sources such as files, the network, or external libraries.

rcthompson 11y ago
Of course I'm well aware this isn't the proper way to do it. I'm just saying it's the only way I've found that is successful with any degree of regularity. I've tried following the documentation as best I can, but like I said, half the time an encode ends up working where I thought I needed a decode or vice versa.

auxym 11y ago

Python 3 really does help with this. You rarely need to use encode and decode, it's done automatically when opening a file in text mode. You do have to specify the encoding you want though.

takeda 11y ago

This is how to look at it. First you need to think of text and binary (bytes) as two distinct types. The text most of the times is how you interact with user, so things that you will display to the user, or what user enters to you. Now, the text is stored in unicode (how, it's not our concern, Python abstracts it from us), the bytes is representation how it's stored in files, send over a network etc. Now if you need to store text in a file, or send over network you need to encode it (most of the time as UTF-8), if you receive data which supposed to be text you decode it. It might be helpful to think of a text as a sound and bytes as mp3. You encode sound as mp3 to store it in a file, and when you want to play it back you decode it. There are some things can cause a confusion. For example if you write text to a file, python will automatically apply the conversion. Things like that are there so you don't have to do the conversion every single time.