I need to decode, with Python 3, a string that was encoded the following way:

>>> s = numpy.asarray(numpy.string_("hello\nworld"))
>>> s
array(b'hello\nworld', dtype='|S11')

I tried:

>>> str(s)
"b'hello\\nworld'">>> s.decode()
AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-31-7f8dd6e0676b> in <module>()
----> 1 s.decode()AttributeError: 'numpy.ndarray' object has no attribute 'decode'>>> s[0].decode()
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
IndexError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-34-fae1dad6938f> in <module>()
----> 1 s[0].decode()IndexError: 0-d arrays can't be indexed

Another option is the np.char collection of string operations.

In [255]: np.char.decode(s)
Out[255]: 
array('hello\nworld', dtype='<U11')

It accepts the encoding keyword if needed. But .astype is probably better if you don't need this.

This s is 0d (shape ()), so needs to be indexed with s[()].

In [268]: s[()]
Out[268]: b'hello\nworld'
In [269]: s[()].decode()
Out[269]: 'hello\nworld'

s.item() also works.