all Python 3codecsterm

codecs

module

The codec registry: text encoding and decoding, error handlers and BOM markers.

Syntax

import codecs

Usually str.encode, bytes.decode and open with encoding are enough — codecs goes deeper: look up a codec by name, decode a stream in chunks with an incremental decoder, register your own error handler. It also holds the BOM constants and bytes-to-bytes codecs such as hex. The codecs.open function is deprecated since Python 3.14 in favour of the built-in open.

Examples

import codecs
print(codecs.lookup('UTF8').name)  # → utf-8
print(codecs.encode(b'Hi', 'hex'))  # → b'4869'
dec = codecs.getincrementaldecoder('utf-8')()
print(repr(dec.decode(b'\xd0')), dec.decode(b'\xaf'))  # → '' Я

See also

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