bytes

A sequence of bytes.

This is conceptually similar to an array of integers between 0 and 255, but represented much more efficiently. You can iterate over it using a for loop.

You can convert

• a string or an array of integers to bytes with the bytes constructor
• bytes to a string with the str constructor, with UTF-8 encoding
• bytes to an array of integers with the array constructor

When reading data from a file, you can decide whether to load it as a string or as raw bytes.

#bytes((123, 160, 22, 0)) \
#bytes("Hello 😃")

#let data = read(
  "rhino.png",
  encoding: none,
)

// Magic bytes.
#array(data.slice(0, 4)) \
#str(data.slice(1, 4))

Converts a value to bytes.

• Strings are encoded in UTF-8.
• Arrays of integers between 0 and 255 are converted directly. The dedicated byte representation is much more efficient than the array representation and thus typically used for large byte buffers (e.g. image data).