sys.argv as bytes in Python 3k

Question

As Python 3k introduces strict distinction between strings and bytes, command line arguments in the array sys.argv are presented as strings. Sometimes it is necessary to tre

Answer 1

You can do:

sys.argv[1].encode() or, if you know the encoding use it as argument or call bytes(sys.argv[1], 'latin-1').

Both should give you a byte representation of the unicode string.

By default, Python3 uses UTF-8.