Understand u, r, b in Front of Python String – Python Tutorial

By | August 12, 2019

When create a python string, we can add u, r and b in front of it. In this tutorial, we will introduce the meaning of them and help you understand and use them.

python string u,r,b

For exampe:

str_u = u'这是一个测试string\n'

str_u is defined starting with u, which means str_u is a unicode string and is encoded by unicode.

When str_u contains some non-ascii characters, you shoud add u in the front of string.

str_b = b'this is a test string\n'

str_b is defined starting with b, which means str_b is a bytes type, it can be decode to a string.

str_r = r'this is a test string\n'

str_r is defined starting with r, which means characters in str_r can not be escaped, \n does not mean new line, only represents characters ‘\‘ and ‘n‘.

Print str_u, str_b and str_r.

print(type(str_u))
print(str_u)
print(type(str_b))
print(str_b)
print(type(str_r))
print(str_r)

Then the result is:

<class 'str'>
这是一个测试string

<class 'bytes'>
b'this is a test string\n'
<class 'str'>
this is a test string\n

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