Convert Strings as Bytes to String

Question

I read the first few bytes of a JPEG

f = open(filename, 'rb')
firstTwoBytes = f.read(2)
if firstTwoBytes != '\xff\xd8':

firstTwoBytes iny my debugger is: bytes: b'\xff\xd8' which is correct?

So my String comparison fails. How best to fix this?

Thanks

Answer 1

Try this:

if firstTwoBytes != b'\xff\xd8':

• More Than Five: Chan Thanks. As a matter of interest is this a python 3 thing? Is there any difference in behaviour here between python2 and python3?

Answer 2

So, compare to binary not to the string:

f = open(filename, 'rb')
firstTwoBytes = f.read(2)
if firstTwoBytes != b'\xff\xd8':