How do I get rid of the b-prefix in a string in python?

Michael Zippo

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A bunch of the tweets I am importing are having this issue where they read

b"I posted a new photo to Facebook"

I gather the b indicates it is a byte. But this is proving problematic because in my CSV files that I end up writing, the b doesn"t go away and is interferring in future code.

Is there a simple way to remove this b prefix from my lines of text?

Keep in mind, I seem to need to have the text encoded in utf-8 or tweepy has trouble pulling them from the web.

Here"s the link content I"m analyzing:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sjmsbuhrghj7abt/new_tweets.txt?dl=0

new_tweets = "content in the link"

Code Attempt

outtweets = [[tweet.text.encode("utf-8").decode("utf-8")] for tweet in new_tweets]
print(outtweets)

Error

UnicodeEncodeError                        Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-21-6019064596bf> in <module>()
      1 for screen_name in user_list:
----> 2     get_all_tweets(screen_name,"instance file")

<ipython-input-19-e473b4771186> in get_all_tweets(screen_name, mode)
     99             with open(os.path.join(save_location,"%s.instance" % screen_name), "w") as f:
    100                 writer = csv.writer(f)
--> 101                 writer.writerows(outtweets)
    102         else:
    103             with open(os.path.join(save_location,"%s.csv" % screen_name), "w") as f:

C:UsersStan ShunpikeAnaconda3libencodingscp1252.py in encode(self, input, final)
     17 class IncrementalEncoder(codecs.IncrementalEncoder):
     18     def encode(self, input, final=False):
---> 19         return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]
     20 
     21 class IncrementalDecoder(codecs.IncrementalDecoder):

UnicodeEncodeError: "charmap" codec can"t encode characters in position 64-65: character maps to <undefined>

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Julia Richtgofen

California | 2023-04-01

Thanks for explaining! I was stuck with How do I get rid of the b-prefix in a string in python? for some hours, finally got it done 🤗. I am just not quite sure it is the best method

Angelo Krasiko

Massachussetts | 2023-04-01

Thanks for explaining! I was stuck with How do I get rid of the b-prefix in a string in python? for some hours, finally got it done 🤗. Will get back tomorrow with feedback

Manuel Robinson

Vigrinia | 2023-04-01

I was preparing for my coding interview, thanks for clarifying this - How do I get rid of the b-prefix in a string in python? in Python is not the simplest one. Checked yesterday, it works!