Since Python 3.0, the language features a ``str`` type that contain Unicode
characters, meaning any string created using ``"unicode rocks!"``, ``'unicode
-rocks!``, or the triple-quoted string syntax is stored as Unicode.
+rocks!'``, or the triple-quoted string syntax is stored as Unicode.
To insert a Unicode character that is not part ASCII, e.g., any letters with
accents, one can use escape sequences in their string literals as such::
.. method:: str.encode([encoding[, errors]])
- Return an encoded version of the string. Default encoding is the current
- default string encoding. *errors* may be given to set a different error
- handling scheme. The default for *errors* is ``'strict'``, meaning that
- encoding errors raise a :exc:`UnicodeError`. Other possible values are
- ``'ignore'``, ``'replace'``, ``'xmlcharrefreplace'``, ``'backslashreplace'`` and
- any other name registered via :func:`codecs.register_error`, see section
- :ref:`codec-base-classes`. For a list of possible encodings, see section
- :ref:`standard-encodings`.
+ Return an encoded version of the string as a bytes object. Default encoding
+ is the current default string encoding. *errors* may be given to set a
+ different error handling scheme. The default for *errors* is ``'strict'``,
+ meaning that encoding errors raise a :exc:`UnicodeError`. Other possible
+ values are ``'ignore'``, ``'replace'``, ``'xmlcharrefreplace'``,
+ ``'backslashreplace'`` and any other name registered via
+ :func:`codecs.register_error`, see section :ref:`codec-base-classes`. For a
+ list of possible encodings, see section :ref:`standard-encodings`.
.. method:: str.endswith(suffix[, start[, end]])
b = a.replace(b"a", b"f")
+.. method:: bytes.decode([encoding[, errors]])
+ bytearray.decode([encoding[, errors]])
+
+ Return a string decoded from the given bytes. Default encoding is the
+ current default string encoding. *errors* may be given to set a different
+ error handling scheme. The default for *errors* is ``'strict'``, meaning
+ that encoding errors raise a :exc:`UnicodeError`. Other possible values are
+ ``'ignore'``, ``'replace'`` and any other name registered via
+ :func:`codecs.register_error`, see section :ref:`codec-base-classes`. For a
+ list of possible encodings, see section :ref:`standard-encodings`.
+
+
The bytes and bytearray types have an additional class method:
.. classmethod:: bytes.fromhex(string)