["python"]
Python: Get size of string in bytes

I have a string that is to be sent over a network. I need to check the total bytes it is represented in. sys.getsizeof(string_name) returns extra bytes. For example, for sys.getsizeof("a") returns 22, while one character is only represented in 1 byte in Python. Is there some other method to find this?
If you want the number of bytes in a string, this function should do it for you pretty solidly. def utf8len(s): return len(s.encode('utf-8')) The reason you got weird numbers is because encapsulated in a string is a bunch of other information due to the fact that strings are actual objects in Python. It’s interesting because if you look at my solution to encode the string into 'utf-8', there's an 'encode' method on the 's' object (which is a string). Well, it needs to be stored somewhere right? Hence, the higher than normal byte count. Its including that method, along with a few others :).