figuring out # of bytes

[codecraig]

i want to the number of bytes in a string...

is, len(x) accurate?

so, x = "hi"
len(x) == 2 ....so that means two bytes?

thanks

 

[Jaime Wyant]

i want to the number of bytes in a string...

is, len(x) accurate?

so, x = "hi"
len(x) == 2 ....so that means two bytes?

thanks

No, that means that the string is two bytes in length. The number of
bytes is dependent on the encoding. It seems like there was a thread
on this subject recently.

jw

 

[Irmen de Jong]

i want to the number of bytes in a string...

is, len(x) accurate?

so, x = "hi"
len(x) == 2 ....so that means two bytes?

thanks

As long as type(x)==str, this is correct.

--Irmen

 

[John J. Lee]

No, that means that the string is two bytes in length. The number of
bytes is dependent on the encoding. It seems like there was a thread

[...]

That's only an issue if type(x) != str. (eg., type(x) == unicode)


John

 

[codecraig]

so each character in the string is 1 byte? if so, can u point me to
somewhere that states that perhaps?

thanks

 

[Jaime Wyant]

No, that means that the string is two bytes in length. The number of
bytes is dependent on the encoding. It seems like there was a thread
on this subject recently.

Ughh, i misstated. More correctly, the string is 2 "characters" in
length. The number of bytes per character depends on the encoding.

jw

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

so each character in the string is 1 byte? if so, can u point me to
somewhere that states that perhaps?

the documentation, perhaps?

http://www.python.org/doc/ref/types.html

Strings

The items of a string are characters. There is no separate
character type; a character is represented by a string of one
item. Characters represent (at least) 8-bit bytes. The built-in
functions chr() and ord() convert between characters and
nonnegative integers representing the byte values. Bytes
with the values 0-127 usually represent the corresponding
ASCII values, but the interpretation of values is up to the
program. The string data type is also used to represent
arrays of bytes, e.g., to hold data read from a file.

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