all Python 3Byte sequencesfunction

bytes.translate

bytes — replace and translate

Map bytes through a 256-byte translation table.

Syntax

b.translate(...)

The table has to be exactly 256 bytes long (bytes.maketrans builds it for you), or None when all you want is the delete argument. Translation happens byte by byte, so running it over UTF-8 text with non-ASCII characters mangles multi-byte sequences — decode first and use str.translate there. The payoff is that a single pass rewrites many byte values at once, where you would otherwise chain several replace calls.

Examples

print(b'abc'.translate(bytes.maketrans(b'a', b'X')))   # → b'Xbc'
print(b'hello'.translate(bytes.maketrans(b'el', b'ip')))   # → b'hippo'
print(b'a-b-c'.translate(None, b'-'))   # → b'abc'
print(b'a1b2'.translate(bytes.maketrans(b'ab', b'AB'), b'12'))   # → b'AB'
print(b'abc'.translate(None))   # → b'abc'
print(b'abc'.translate(b'xy'))   # → ValueError

See also

Common errors

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