Python bytes() built-in function

Introduction

In Python, the bytes type is an immutable sequence of single bytes. It represents a sequence of integers in the range of 0 to 255, which can be used to represent binary data such as images, audio, or other types of files.

You can create a bytes object in several ways. One way is to use the bytes() constructor and pass it a string, a bytearray object, or a bytes object. For example:

>>> data = "Hello, World!"
>>> bytes_obj = bytes(data, "utf-8")
>>> print(bytes_obj)
# b'Hello, World!'

Another way is to use a literal notation prefixing the string with b or B:

data = b"Hello, World!"
print(data)
# b'Hello, World!'

You can also use slicing and indexing to access individual bytes, and use built-in methods such as count() and find() to search for specific bytes within the object.

The bytes type is useful when you need to work with binary data that should not be modified, such as the contents of a file. Since it is immutable, it can be used in situations where the data needs to be protected from accidental modification.