Python shows a literal string value, and uses escape codes in the console:
>>> x = '\x74\x65\x73\x74'
>>> x
'test'
>>> print(x)
test
How can I do the same when reading from a file?
$ cat test.txt
\x74\x65\x73\x74
$ cat test.py
with open('test.txt') as fd:
for line in fd:
line = line.strip()
print(line)
$ python3 test.py
\x74\x65\x73\x74
using string encode and decode function
refer this for python standard encodings
for python 2
line = "\\x74\\x65\\x73\\x74"
line = line.decode('string_escape')
# test
for python3
line = "\\x74\\x65\\x73\\x74"
line = line.encode('utf-8').decode('unicode_escape')
# test
Read the file in binary mode to preserve the hex representation into a bytes-like sequence of escaped hex characters. Then use bytes.decode to convert from a bytes-like object to a regular str. You can use the unicode_escape Python-specific encoding as the encoding type.
$ cat test.txt
\x74\x65\x73\x74
$ cat test.py
with open('test.txt', "rb") as fd:
for line in fd:
print(line)
print(line.decode("unicode_escape"))
$ python3 test.py
b'\\x74\\x65\\x73\\x74\n'
test
