def encode(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.encode` element-wise.

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

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