Read b-string from file

Question

I have a txt file that contains lines like b'111\r\n222\r\n333'.

When I read the file with

with open('raw2.txt', 'r') as f:
    nums = f.read().splitlines()

then the b-rows are turned into regular strings.

"b'111\\r\\n222\\r\\n333'"

If I read as 'rb', these lines become binary

b"b'111\\r\\n222\\r\\n333'"

How do I read the file correctly so that they look like:

b'111\r\n222\r\n333'

?

Thanks

This question likely has an answer here https://stackoverflow.com/a/73243686/1328439 — Dima Chubarov, Mar 29 '23 at 16:29
A less wacky solution would have been to save the file as binary in the first place if that's what you actually want. — tripleee, Mar 29 '23 at 17:58

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '23 at 16:27

2

Use ast.literal_eval() to parse the literal syntax.

import ast

with open('raw2.txt', 'r') as f:
    nums = list(map(ast.literal_eval, f.read().splitlines()))

answered Mar 29 '23 at 16:27

Barmar

1 Answers1