def decode(a, encoding=None, errors=None):
return _to_string_or_unicode_array(<EOL>_vec_string(a, object_, '<STR_LIT>', _clean_args(encoding, errors)))<EOL>
Calls `str.decode` element-wise.

The set of available codecs comes from the Python standard library,
and may be extended at runtime.  For more information, see the
:mod:`codecs` module.

Parameters
----------
a : array_like of str or unicode

encoding : str, optional
   The name of an encoding

errors : str, optional
   Specifies how to handle encoding errors

Returns
-------
out : ndarray

See also
--------
str.decode

Notes
-----
The type of the result will depend on the encoding specified.

Examples
--------
>>> c = np.array(['aAaAaA', '  aA  ', 'abBABba'])
>>> c
array(['aAaAaA', '  aA  ', 'abBABba'],
    dtype='|S7')
>>> np.char.encode(c, encoding='cp037')
array(['\\x81\\xc1\\x81\\xc1\\x81\\xc1', '@@\\x81\\xc1@@',
    '\\x81\\x82\\xc2\\xc1\\xc2\\x82\\x81'],
    dtype='|S7')