How can I parse a bytestring in Python 3?

Question

Basically, I have two bytestrings in a single line like this:

b'\xe0\xa6\xb8\xe0\xa6\x96 - \xe0\xa6\xb6\xe0\xa6\x96\n'

This is a Unicode string that I'm importing from an online file using urllib, and I want to compare the individual bytestrings so that I can replace the wrong ones. However, I can't find out any way to parse the string so that I get \xe0\xa6\xb8\xe0\xa6\x96 and \xe0\xa6\xb6\xe0\xa6\x96 in two different variables.

I tried converting it into a raw string like str(b'\xe0\xa6\xb8\xe0\xa6\x96') and the indexing actually works, but in that case I can't revert back to the original bytestring in the first place.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

I would recommend trying something like this...

arr = b'\xe0\xa6\xb8\xe0\xa6\x96 - \xe0\xa6\xb6\xe0\xa6\x96\n'

splt = arr.decode().split(' - ')

b_arr1 = splt[0].encode()
b_arr2 = splt[1].encode()

I tried it out in the Python 3 terminal and it works fine.

Answer 2

I would do something like this:

a = b'\xe0\xa6\xb8\xe0\xa6\x96 - \xe0\xa6\xb6\xe0\xa6\x96\n'

parts = [part.strip() for part in a.decode().split('-')]

first_part = parts[0].encode()
second_part = parts[1].encode()