# Convert a Buffer to a string (/docs/guides/binary/buffer-to-string)

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Related: [Convert an ArrayBuffer to a string](/docs/guides/binary/arraybuffer-to-string.md), [Convert an ArrayBuffer to a Buffer](/docs/guides/binary/arraybuffer-to-buffer.md), [Convert an ArrayBuffer to a Blob](/docs/guides/binary/arraybuffer-to-blob.md), [Convert an ArrayBuffer to an array of numbers](/docs/guides/binary/arraybuffer-to-array.md), [Convert an ArrayBuffer to a Uint8Array](/docs/guides/binary/arraybuffer-to-typedarray.md), [Convert a Buffer to an ArrayBuffer](/docs/guides/binary/buffer-to-arraybuffer.md)

The [`Buffer`](https://nodejs.org/api/buffer.html) class provides a `.toString()` method that converts a `Buffer` to a string.

```ts
const buf = Buffer.from("hello");
const str = buf.toString();
// => "hello"
```

***

You can optionally specify an encoding and byte range.

```ts
const buf = Buffer.from("hello world!");
const str = buf.toString("utf8", 0, 5);
// => "hello"
```

***

See [Binary Data](/runtime/binary-data#conversion).