How to decode() with a subset of 'ascii'?

Question

I get bytecode data (b'something') which I try: to .decode('ascii') to check if this is ASCII text. The problem is that

In [11]: b'\x00\x0c\x00'.decode('ascii')
Out[11]: u'\x00\x0c\x00'

so what is recognized as "text" is not really what I want (which are 32 to 126 ASCII codes). Is there a way to use a subset of 'ascii' for the decoding?

Stephane Martin · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-19T20:57:21.607

1

in python 2:

def test_if_ascii(text):
    if isinstance(test, unicode):
        raise TypeError('hey man, dont feed me unicode plz')
    return all(32 <= ord(c) <= 126 for c in text)

in python 3 almost the same, just unicode is call 'str', and bytes are called 'bytes'

def test_if_ascii(text):
    if isinstance(test, str):
        raise TypeError('hey man, dont feed me unicode plz')
    return all(32 <= ord(c) <= 126 for c in text)

edited Oct 19 '15 at 20:57

answered Oct 19 '15 at 20:54

Stephane Martin

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Thank you - I forgot to mention that this is Python3 (I will update the question) – WoJ Oct 19 '15 at 20:55
no problem, added it too – Stephane Martin Oct 19 '15 at 20:57
This is a good idea, I will also use string.printable for the check, thanks (need to wait some minutes before accepting) – WoJ Oct 19 '15 at 20:59

How to decode() with a subset of 'ascii'?

1 Answers1