title: What does the 'b' character do in front of a string literal?
body: <p>Apparently, the following is the valid syntax:</p>
  <pre><code>b'The string'
  </code></pre>
  <p>I would like to know:</p>
  <ol>
  <li>What does this <code>b</code> character in front of the string mean?</li>
  <li>What are the effects of using it?</li>
  <li>What are appropriate situations to use it?</li>
  </ol>
  <p>I found a <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/4749442/346561">related question</a> right here on SO, but that question is about PHP though, and it states the <code>b</code> is used to indicate the string is binary, as opposed to Unicode, which was needed for code to be compatible from version of PHP &lt; 6, when migrating to PHP 6. I don't think this applies to Python.</p>
  <p>I did find <a href="http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html#unicode-strings" rel="noreferrer">this documentation</a> on the Python site about using a <code>u</code> character in the same syntax to specify a string as Unicode. Unfortunately, it doesn't mention the <strong>b</strong> character anywhere in that document.</p>
  <p>Also, just out of curiosity, are there more symbols than the <code>b</code> and <code>u</code> that do other things?</p>