So, I have this string 01010011101100000110010101101100011011000110111101110100011010000110010101110010011001010110100001101111011101110111100101101111011101010110010001101111011010010110111001100111011010010110110101100110011010010110111001100101011000010111001001100101011110010110111101110101011001100110100101101110011001010101000000000000
and I want to decode it using python, I'm getting this error
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 280: invalid start byte
According to this webiste:
The output should be S�ellotherehowyoudoingimfineareyoufineP
Here's my code:
def decodeAscii(bin_string):
binary_int = int(bin_string, 2);
byte_number = binary_int.bit_length() + 7 // 8
binary_array = binary_int.to_bytes(byte_number, "big")
ascii_text = binary_array.decode()
print(ascii_text)
How do I fix it?
3 Answers
Your bytes simply cannot be decoded as utf-8, just as the error message tells you.
utf-8 is the default encoding parameter of decode - and the best way to put in the correct encoding value is to know the encoding - otherwise you'll have to guess.
And guessing is probably what the website does, too, by trying the most common encodings, until one does not throw an exception:
def decodeAscii(bin_string):
binary_int = int(bin_string, 2);
byte_number = binary_int.bit_length() + 7 // 8
binary_array = binary_int.to_bytes(byte_number, "big")
ascii_text = "Bin string cannot be decoded"
for enc in ['utf-8', 'ascii', 'ansi']:
try:
ascii_text = binary_array.decode(encoding=enc)
break
except:
pass
print(ascii_text)
s = "01010011101100000110010101101100011011000110111101110100011010000110010101110010011001010110100001101111011101110111100101101111011101010110010001101111011010010110111001100111011010010110110101100110011010010110111001100101011000010111001001100101011110010110111101110101011001100110100101101110011001010101000000000000"
decodeAscii(s)
Output:
S°ellotherehowyoudoingimfineareyoufineP
But there's no guarantee that you find the "correct" encoding by guessing.
Your binary string is just not a valid ascii or utf-8 string. You can tell decode to ignore invalid sequences by saying
ascii_text = binary_array.decode(errors='ignore')
It could be solved in one line:
Try this:
def bin_to_text(bin_str):
bin_to_str = "".join([chr(int(bin_str[i:i+8],2)) for i in range(0,len(bin_str),8)])
return bin_to_str
bin_str = '01010011101100000110010101101100011011000110111101110100011010000110010101110010011001010110100001101111011101110111100101101111011101010110010001101111011010010110111001100111011010010110110101100110011010010110111001100101011000010111001001100101011110010110111101110101011001100110100101101110011001010101000000000000'
bin_to_str = bin_to_text(bin_str)
print(bin_to_str)
Output:
S°ellotherehowyoudoingimfineareyoufineP
