How do I remove the 'b' prefix when my message is printed?

Question

I am just beginning to program UDP servers and clients in Python. I have followed a tutorial and added some of my own knowledge to create a command-line chat server. Everything has worked as planned except for one thing: when my client sends a message to the server, the server prints it with a b' in front of the actual message. My client gets his message sent back to him with the b' in front. I have tried decoding the message in the client, but then it never sends. I have tried decoding the message when the server is going to send it back, but it never sends back to the client. My reason for wanting this removed is because it ruins the look I wanted for the program. Thank you for any help! Below is my code for first the server and then the client. After my code I have pasted some of the output I have gotten so you can see exactly what I am talking about.

#Server   

from socket import *
import time

address = input("IP Address: ")
port = input("Port: ")

clients = []

serversock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM)
serversock.bind((address, int(port)))
serversock.setblocking(0)

quitting = False
print("Server is up and running so far.")

while not quitting:
    try:
        data, addr = serversock.recvfrom(1024)
        if "Quit" in str(data):
            quitting = True
        if addr not in clients:
            clients.append(addr)
        print(time.ctime(time.time()) + str(addr) + ": :" + str(data))
        for client in clients:
            serversock.sendto(data, client)
    except:
        pass
serversock.close()

#Client

from socket import *
import threading
import time

tLock = threading.Lock()
shutdown = False

def receiving(name, sock):
    while not shutdown:
        try:
            tLock.acquire()
            while True:
                data, addr = sock.recvfrom(1024)
                print(str(data))
        except:
            pass
        finally:
            tLock.release()

address = input("IP Address: ")
port = 0

server = address, 6090

clientsock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM)
clientsock.setsockopt(SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
clientsock.bind((address, int(port)))
clientsock.setblocking(0)

rT = threading.Thread(target=receiving, args=("RecvThread", clientsock))
rT.start()

nick = input("How about we get you a nickname: ")
message = input(nick + "> ").encode()
while message != "q":
    if message != "":
        clientsock.sendto(nick.encode() + "> ".encode() + message, server)
    tLock.acquire()
    message = input(nick + "> ").encode()
    tLock.release()
    time.sleep(0.2)

shutdown = True
rT.join()
clientsock.close()

How the server receives the message: Sun Oct 30 18:23:22 2016('192.168.1.66', 61249): :b'jake> jake'

Yes I did, but for some reason it didnt print when I did. Maybe I made a mistake while doing it, I'll give it another go. Thabks for your suggestion! — Jake Ramos, Oct 31 '16 at 14:16
Possible duplicate of [Suppress/ print without b' prefix for bytes in Python 3](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16748083/suppress-print-without-b-prefix-for-bytes-in-python-3) — wesinat0r, Dec 11 '18 at 07:12

Thomas Moreau · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-31T08:22:14.533

7

The data you are sending/receiving are bytes array so you need to decode them to get a string without the b''.
You can just use print(data.decode()) to get the right output. If you do not specify any encoding, default behavior is to use utf8 (see python doc for more info)

edited Oct 31 '16 at 08:22

answered Oct 31 '16 at 02:01

Thomas Moreau

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Thank you! I tried decoding the whole entire thing instead of just data and that's what went wrong. – Jake Ramos Oct 31 '16 at 14:55

How do I remove the 'b' prefix when my message is printed?

1 Answers1