codec for byte transparency

[Skaperen]

i'm working with content that is already UTF-8 encoded, i got in bytes. i'm changing the type to str in a transparent way so that UTF-8 encoding remains unchanged. then i work with it in type str. then i can change it back without any more encoding if i ultimately need it as binary to output it (such as a file open in binary mode). if i am the only one writing the code to work with the content, i'll leave it in type bytes. but often i need to call some other code that expects str.