ypeError: decoding str is not supported

[Peter Otten]

Hongyi Zhao wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have some code comes from python 2 like the following:
> 
> str('a', encoding='utf-8')

This fails in Python 2

>>> str("a", encoding="utf-8")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: str() takes at most 1 argument (2 given)

...unless you have redefined str, e. g. with

>>> str = unicode
>>> str("a", encoding="utf-8")
u'a'

> But for python 3, this will fail as follows:
> 
>>>> str('a', encoding='utf-8')
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<input>", line 1, in <module>
> TypeError: decoding str is not supported
> 
> 
> How to fix it?

Don' try to decode an already decoded string; use it directly:

"a"