Apparently, the following is the valid syntax: b'The string' I would like to know: What does this b character in front of the string mean? What are the effects of using it? What are appropriate situations to use it? I found a related question right here on SO, but that question is about PHP though, and it states the b is used to indicate the string is binary, as opposed to Unicode, which was needed for code to be compatible from version of PHP < 6, when migrating to PHP 6. I don't think this applies to Python. I did find this documentation on the Python site about using a u character in the same syntax to specify a string as Unicode. Unfortunately, it doesn't mention the b character anywhere in that document. Also, just out of curiosity, are there more symbols than the b and u that do other things? Continue reading...
