Help with strange syntax - two single quotes after variable

[mvrk]

Hi,

Can someone tell me exactly what this is supposed to do:

if s == b'':

I don't understand the '' after the b.

[buran]

here from the docs
https://docs.python.org/2/reference/lexi...g-literals

A prefix of 'b' or 'B' is ignored in Python 2; it indicates that the literal should become a bytes literal in Python 3 (e.g. when code is automatically converted with 2to3).

So actually your question should be regarding the b in front of empty str. :-)