Data Structure
Networking
RDBMS
Operating System
Java
MS Excel
iOS
HTML
CSS
Android
Python
C Programming
C++
C#
MongoDB
MySQL
Javascript
PHP
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Mathematics
English
Economics
Psychology
Social Studies
Fashion Studies
Legal Studies
- Selected Reading
- UPSC IAS Exams Notes
- Developer's Best Practices
- Questions and Answers
- Effective Resume Writing
- HR Interview Questions
- Computer Glossary
- Who is Who
struct module in Python
In this tutorial, we are going to learn about the struct module. Let's dive into the tutorial.
The module struct is used to convert the native data types of Python into string of bytes and vice versa. We don't have to install it. It's a built-in module available in Python3.
The struct module is related to the C languages. We have to know the notations used in C to represent various data type to work with struct module. Let's see some of them.
| Data Type | Format Character |
|---|---|
| int | i |
| char | c |
| string | s |
| float | f |
Let's see how to convert the Python data types into bytes.
struct.pack()
The method struct.pack() is used to convert the data types into bytes. It takes multiple arguments based on the first string.
We have to pass the first string with format characters as mention in the above table. We can pass any arguments as we want. Let's see some examples.
- struct.pack('14s i', b'Tutorialspoint', 2020)
- struct.pack('i i f 3s', 1, 2, 3.5, b'abc')
Let's convert the above examples into bytes.
Example
# importing the struct module
import struct
# converting into bytes
print(struct.pack('14s i', b'Tutorialspoint', 2020))
print(struct.pack('i i f 3s', 1, 2, 3.5, b'abc'))Output
If you run the above code, then you will get the following result.
b'Tutorialspoint\x00\x00\xe4\x07\x00\x00' b'\x01\x00\x00\x00\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00`@abc'
struct.unpack()¶
We have another method struct.unpack() that converts bytes to native Python data types. It takes two arguments, the first one is similar to the pack() method and the second one is the result of struct.pack() method.
The method struct.unpack() always returns a tutple.
Example
# importing the struct module
import struct
# converting into bytes
converted_bytes = struct.pack('14s i', b'Tutorialspoint', 2020)
# converting into Python data types
print(struct.unpack('14s i', converted_bytes))Output
If you run the above code, then you will get the following result.
(b'Tutorialspoint', 2020)
Conclusion
If you have any doubts in the tutorial, mention them in the comment section.
3K+ Views
