Add "b" prefix to python variable?

Question

Adding the prefix "b" to a string converts it to bytes:

b'example'

But I can't figure out how to do this with a variable. Assuming string = 'example', none of these seem to work:

b(string)
b string
b'' + string

Is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

# only an example, you can choose a different encoding
bytes('example', encoding='utf-8')

In Python3:

Bytes literals are always prefixed with 'b' or 'B'; they produce an instance of the bytes type instead of the str type. They may only contain ASCII characters; bytes with a numeric value of 128 or greater must be expressed with escapes.

In Python2:

A prefix of 'b' or 'B' is ignored in Python 2; it indicates that the literal should become a bytes literal in Python 3.

More about bytes():

bytes([source[, encoding[, errors]]])

Return a new “bytes” object, which is an immutable sequence of integers in the range 0 <= x < 256. bytes is an immutable version of bytearray – it has the same non-mutating methods and the same indexing and slicing behavior.

Accordingly, constructor arguments are interpreted as for bytearray().

Bytes objects can also be created with literals, see String and Bytes literals.