What is binascii.a2b_qp in Python?

The binascii is a widely used Python library for ASCII-encoded binary representations. It contains several methods for converting to binary from ASCII or hex, and vice versa.

binascii.a2b_qp is one of the methods of the Python binascii library. We can use this method to convert any data (string) to a binary format. This binary data is returned as a result.

Syntax

a2b_qp(data, header: bool=False)

binascii.a2b_qp takes an optional parameter of header as well. Setting it to true will allow underscores (_) in the input data to be treated as spaces. For example, hi_hel_p should return hi hel p with the spaces.

Code

Below are a few examples to illustrate the use of binascii.a2b_qp:

import binascii
# Convert string into binary
# In the AScii table, there is no character for 1F,
# therefore, it is written as \x1f 
print(binascii.a2b_qp("=1F_Hello _World", False))
 
# In the AScii table, there is a character '?' for 3F,
# therefore, it is replaced by ?
print(binascii.a2b_qp("=3F_Hello _World", False))
# Convert string into binary
# Convert string into binary, header is set to true
# this means underscore will be treated as a space.
print(binascii.a2b_qp("=3F_Hello _World", True))

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