Python Bytearray Printing

Question

I have an integer list in Python that should correspond to the following int values (which can be changed to hex byte values):

[10, 145, 140, 188, 212, 198, 210, 25, 152, 20, 120, 15, 49, 113, 33, 220, 124, 67, 174, 224, 220, 241, 241]

However, when I convert that list to a bytearray (using bytearray(nameOfList)), I get the following printout.

bytearray(b'\n\x91\x8c\xbc\xd4\xc6\xd2\x19\x98\x14x\x0f1q!\xdc|C\xae\xe0\xdc\xf1\xf1')

I can pull the correct values from this byte array, regardless of how it prints, but shouldn't the bytearray printout correspond to the hex values of the byte array? (I mean, it seems to mostly follow the hex values up until after \x0f, where it starts putting out gibberish...)

It looks fine to me. It's just rendering bytes as ASCII characters whenever possible. After `\x0f` you have 49='1' and 113='q', etc. http://www.asciitable.com/ — axblount, Jun 13 '13 at 17:50
Exactly ... It only represents non-printing characters as `\x..` — mgilson, Jun 13 '13 at 17:51
[`list(your_bytearray) == your_list`](http://ideone.com/GdLDxK) — jfs, Jun 13 '13 at 17:53

score 39 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 26 '23 at 17:20

39

>>> x = bytearray(b'\n\x91\x8c\xbc\xd4\xc6\xd2\x19\x98\x14x\x0f1q!\xdc|C\xae\xe0
\xdc\xf1\xf1')
>>> import binascii
>>> print(binascii.hexlify(x))
0a918cbcd4c6d2199814780f317121dc7c43aee0dcf1f1

Use binascii if you want all of it to be printed as a hex string

edited Jul 26 '23 at 17:20

Ben Froelich-Leon

35
7

answered Jun 13 '13 at 17:55

Lelouch Lamperouge

8,171
8
49
60

...just what I needed. – uhoh Jan 31 '18 at 11:17

score 18 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 12 '21 at 08:41

18

Use bytes.hex()

>>> x = bytearray([0x01,0x02,0xff])
>>> print(x.hex())
0102ff

answered Feb 12 '21 at 08:41

hongse

193
1
4

1

This is so much better. – étale-cohomology Jul 02 '21 at 12:14

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 13 '13 at 17:52

12

It looks fine to me. It's just rendering bytes as ASCII characters whenever possible. After 15=\x0f you have 49='1' and 113='q', etc.

See http://asciitable.com

answered Jun 13 '13 at 17:52

axblount

2,639
23
27

Is there any way to switch this behavior off? It's so annoying when you are working with binary data. – Peter Aug 07 '22 at 03:31

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 13 '22 at 02:44

This is probably not very performant at large sizes, but I find this makes it easier to read:

buff = bytearray(list(range(10)))
print(buff)
print(", ".join(hex(b) for b in buff))

prints

bytearray(b'\x00\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08\t')
0x0, 0x1, 0x2, 0x3, 0x4, 0x5, 0x6, 0x7, 0x8, 0x9

Python Bytearray Printing

4 Answers4

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