Print without b' prefix for bytes in Python 3

How do I print a bytes string without the b' prefix in Python 3?

>>> print(b'hello')
b'hello'

Use decode:

>>> print(b'hello'.decode())
hello

If the bytes use an appropriate character encoding already; you could print them directly:

sys.stdout.buffer.write(data)

or

nwritten = os.write(sys.stdout.fileno(), data)  # NOTE: it may write less than len(data) bytes

If the data is in an UTF-8 compatible format, you can convert the bytes to a string.

>>> print(str(b"hello", "utf-8"))
hello

Optionally, convert to hex first if the data is not UTF-8 compatible (e.g. data is raw bytes).

>>> from binascii import hexlify
>>> print(hexlify(b"\x13\x37"))
b'1337'
>>> print(str(hexlify(b"\x13\x37"), "utf-8"))
1337

>>> from codecs import encode  # alternative
>>> print(str(encode(b"\x13\x37", "hex"), "utf-8"))
1337

According to the source for bytes.__repr__, the b'' is baked into the method.

One workaround is to manually slice off the b'' from the resulting repr():

>>> x = b'\x01\x02\x03\x04'

>>> print(repr(x))
b'\x01\x02\x03\x04'

>>> print(repr(x)[2:-1])
\x01\x02\x03\x04

To show or print:

<byte_object>.decode("utf-8")

To encode or save:

<str_object>.encode('utf-8')

I am a little late but for Python 3.9.1 this worked for me and removed the -b prefix:

print(outputCode.decode())

Use decode() instead of encode() for converting bytes to a string.

>>> import curses
>>> print(curses.version.decode())
2.2

It's so simple... (With that, you can encode the dictionary and list bytes, then you can stringify it using json.dump / json.dumps)

You just need use base64

import base64

data = b"Hello world!" # Bytes
data = base64.b64encode(data).decode() # Returns a base64 string, which can be decoded without error.
print(data)

There are bytes that cannot be decoded by default(pictures are an example), so base64 will encode those bytes into bytes that can be decoded to string, to retrieve the bytes just use

data = base64.b64decode(data.encode())