Python 3.1.1 string to hex

Question

I am trying to use str.encode() but I get

>>> \"hello\".encode(hex)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File \"\", line 1         


        

Answer 1

In Python 3, all strings are unicode. Usually, if you encode an unicode object to a string, you use .encode('TEXT_ENCODING'), since hex is not a text encoding, you should use codecs.encode() to handle arbitrary codecs. For example:

>>>> "hello".encode('hex')
LookupError: 'hex' is not a text encoding; use codecs.encode() to handle arbitrary codecs
>>>> import codecs
>>>> codecs.encode(b"hello", 'hex')
b'68656c6c6f'

Again, since "hello" is unicode, you need to indicate it as a byte string before encoding to hexadecimal. This may be more inline with what your original approach of using the encode method.

The differences between binascii.hexlify and codecs.encode are as follow:

• binascii.hexlify

  Hexadecimal representation of binary data.

  The return value is a bytes object.

  Type: builtin_function_or_method

• codecs.encode

  encode(obj, [encoding[,errors]]) -> object

  Encodes obj using the codec registered for encoding. encoding defaults to the default encoding. errors may be given to set a different error handling scheme. Default is 'strict' meaning that encoding errors raise a ValueError. Other possible values are 'ignore', 'replace' and 'xmlcharrefreplace' as well as any other name registered with codecs.register_error that can handle ValueErrors.

  Type: builtin_function_or_method