Python bytearray() built-in function
From the Python 3 documentation
Return a new array of bytes. The bytearray class is a mutable sequence of integers in the range [...]. It has most of the usual methods of mutable sequences, described in Mutable Sequence Types, as well as most methods that the bytes type has [...].
Introduction
A bytearray
object in Python is similar to a list of integers, but instead of storing numbers, it stores bytes. These bytes can represent binary data, such as an image or a file, or they can represent ASCII or UTF-8 encoded text.
A bytearray
object is mutable, meaning its elements can be changed after it is created. It also has a variety of built-in methods that allow you to manipulate the bytes, such as append()
, extend()
, insert()
, and remove()
.
You can create a bytearray
object in several ways. One way is to use the bytearray()
constructor and pass it a string, a bytes object, or a bytearray
object. For example:
>>> data = "Hello, World!"
>>> bytearray_obj = bytearray(data, "utf-8")
>>> print(bytearray_obj)
# bytearray(b'Hello, World!')
Another way is to use the bytes() function and then convert it to a bytearray object using the bytearray() function:
>>> data = b"Hello, World!"
>>> bytearray_obj = bytearray(data)
>>> print(bytearray_obj)
# bytearray(b'Hello, World!')
Bytearray objects are useful in situations where you need to manipulate binary data or when you want to efficiently modify large amounts of data.